Right Time to Have a Knee Replacement Surgery

I am Dr Deepak Thakur, senior consultant of joint replacement surgery. My area of specialization includes joint replacements including computer navigations knee replacements.

When should we go for a knee replacement? Is there any particular age?

 Well, today’s modern time age is not the criteria for undergoing a knee replacement surgery. Your level of pain, as well as your level of disability, decides when you should go in for a knee replacement. Most of the patients, they are very fearful.

Will there be a lot of pain during the surgery?

Well, with modern pain relieving medications and procedures, nowadays the knee replacement surgery is as pain-free as possible. Even the recovery part, it is a multimodal pain relief which we employ including epidural analgesia’s, patient control analgesia’s, patches and IV medication. Generally, the patient is pain-free, even during the surgery as well as post the recovery. The recovery part starts from the day of the surgery. On the day of the surgery, we make you do some exercises. The next day we make you stand and the second to third, we make you walk with the help of a walker and gradually as the recovery progresses with the help of a stick. We may even allow you to climb and come down from the stairs, depending upon your level of recovery. We generally, advice avoiding contact sports. By contact sports, I mean playing football hockey etc after knee replacement surgery. But most of the activities like swimming, cycling and doing brisk walking you are able to do it very efficiently. You are able to bend your knees after the surgery. Your knee replacement surgery consists of a metal implant which is there implanted in the thigh bone. This is your thigh bone. As well as a metal and a plastic implant

which is implanted on your leg bone. So, this again is your new knee. Of course, you will be able to bend your knees like this, straighten up your knees like this. You will be able to do your normal activities like bending. Your level of bending depends upon how well your leg muscles touch your thigh muscles. This will be the amount of bending that you will be having, which is generally equal to your preoperative status. So yes you will be able to bend and straighten your knees after your knee replacement surgery. You will be able to sit cross legged, but generally, we advise you to not sit cross legged because when you get up it puts a lot of pressure on the knees. But you can sit easily cross legged on the bed because getting up from a bed does not require a lot of pressure on your knees. We employ a computer navigation which is highly accurate even in few degrees. The life and with modern day implants is on an average 15 to 20 years.

For any further queries, you can contact me on lybrate offline or online.