Is it normal for a new hip to CLICK? Mine clunks every single time I stand up and it's doing my head in

#1pbike60(Joined Feb 2025 · 36 posts)March 2, 2026, 10:15 am

Ten weeks post-op, left hip, back on the turbo trainer and delighted with life, except for one thing I can't stop noticing.

My new hip clicks. Or clunks, depending on the day. Every time I stand up from a chair, and quite often on the first couple of steps after I've been sitting a while, there's this distinct clunk from deep in the joint. It doesn't hurt. It's not accompanied by anything giving way. But I can FEEL it as well as hear it, and once you've noticed a noise coming from inside your own body you cannot un-notice it.

Nobody mentioned this at any point. Is this the metal and plastic doing its thing, is it a tendon, is it a sign something's loose or not seated right? I've half convinced myself I've knocked something out of place, though logically if I had I imagine I'd know about it in ways more dramatic than a click. Anyone else's hip audibly announce itself?

#2gardeninggwen(Joined Jan 2025 · 29 posts)March 2, 2026, 4:40 pm

Oh mine clicked for months. Getting out of the car was the reliable one, a little clunk every time, like the hip clearing its throat before it agreed to work.

Mine faded a lot by about the four or five month mark as the muscles round it got stronger, which is what my physio said would happen, that a lot of the early clicking is the soft tissue and the tendons settling around a joint that's suddenly a slightly different shape and hasn't got its supporting muscle back yet. Painless clicking she was entirely relaxed about. It was the word "painless" she kept leaning on.

#3trev_lefthip(Joined Jul 2025 · 13 posts)March 3, 2026, 9:12 am

Clunks getting out of bed, two years on, still there, still painless, do not care in the slightest anymore. You stop hearing it eventually, or it stops, I genuinely can't tell you which happened to me.

#4Haidee MarshAdmin(Joined Aug 2024 · 268 posts)March 4, 2026, 8:50 am

Peter, the short version: a new hip that clicks or clunks but does not hurt is extremely common, especially in the first few months, and on its own it is not a sign that something has come loose. Mine did it too, most reliably standing up from a low chair, and I spent a fortnight convinced I'd wrecked it before anyone told me it was ordinary.

Here is what I've pieced together from my own recovery and from Ms Raman's corrections over the years, kept firmly on the patient side of the line. Two things tend to make the noise. One is the soft tissue: your tendons and muscles are moving over a joint that is a slightly different shape now, and they haven't got their full strength and bulk back yet, so they can flick and clunk until the muscle catches up, which for a lot of people is somewhere around the 3 to 6 month mark, exactly as Gwen found. The other is the implant surfaces themselves, the ball and the liner, which can make a small click as they move, and that too can be perfectly normal. The strengthening work is doing the quiet job of settling this, which is one more reason not to let the exercise sheet slide, and the general path of it is in the week by week recovery timeline.

What changes the picture, and this is the part I'll be firm on because it's exactly where a founder should hand you back to a clinician: a click is worth mentioning to your surgeon or physiotherapist, and worth a prompt call rather than a wait, if it comes with pain, if the hip feels like it's catching, slipping, or giving way, if there's any new instability, or if the noise suddenly changes or arrives after a fall or an awkward twist. Painless and unchanging is the reassuring story nearly everyone here is telling. Painful, new, or unstable is a different conversation, and it's one for the people who can actually examine the joint and look at an X-ray, not for me. If yours stays painless I'd log it, mention it at your next check, and get back on the turbo. The odds and ends of living with the noises long term are in daily life after a hip replacement.

#5moira1963(Joined Oct 2025 · 8 posts)March 6, 2026, 7:30 pm

pbike60 said:

once you've noticed a noise coming from inside your own body you cannot un-notice it

This is the truest sentence in the thread. Mine clunked, painlessly, and the noise bothered me roughly ten times more than the actual recovery did, which tells you something about brains.

Mentioned it at my six week check almost as an afterthought, the surgeon pressed here and there, watched me stand up, said "painless click, muscles catching up, come back if it hurts or gives way", and that was the entire appointment on the subject. It quietly stopped somewhere in the summer and I couldn't tell you the day. You will forget you ever posted this, Peter, honestly.