Discover essential post-surgery care tips for your knee replacement journey. Learn from Dr. Khera's expertise to ensure a smooth recovery and regain mobility with confidence. Knee replacement is a surgery that is done to remove all weight bearing structures on the knee joint. It is performed on people whose knees have been compromised by arthritis or osteomyelitis. Some other cases is when the knee is completely injured to an extent that a person cannot conveniently walk as required. It is mainly performed with an aim to eliminate the pain that a person feels due to excess inflammation and other wounds on the knee joints. After surgery, the condition is not usually as normal as one would expect so below are some of the ways to manage the knee joint.
Take Your Pain Medications (Knee replacement surgery)
After surgery, it is clear that your knee would be in pain due to the surgical wound on it. Pain comes as a result of inflamed tissues. When you take pain medication, the inflammation reduces, the pain impulses reduce and you are able to be relieved effectively. Pain medication also reduce the swelling thereby promoting healing on your knee joint at all times.
Antibiotics Are Important in Your Recovery Process
Every wound is always prone to infections. After joint replacement, the foreign materials installed on your knee could be invaded by pathogens making your knee to be infected. Don’t wait that to happen, take your antibiotics as prescribed. Most doctors will prescribe broad spectrum antibiotics to cover you from a wide array of bacteria types. Infections can prolong your healing duration making you to always suffer every now and then. If your surgical area is not infected and you do well, you will recover quicker than you anticipate.
Remain Immobile for a While
After you a undergo a knee joint, you should not start to walk immediately. Doing so would interfere with the healing of the wound and also disrupt the anatomical arrangement of the materials installed. It is good to wait until all the wound has healed and get a doctor’s analysis and approved before you start walking. If you want to know whether you are ready to move, attend on post-surgical clinic sessions so that you know exactly when and where you can start walking. Most doctors will do an xray to see if you all components on your knee have harmoniously joined each other for the improvement of your knee.
Attend Your Physiotherapy Clinics and Sessions
Walking again is always the dream of every person who undergoes a knee replacement surgery. However, many people experience a difficulty in doing joint movements as they used to before the surgery. To be on the safe side, make sure you attend physiotherapy clinics because these people understand how to rehabilitate your joint up to the point where it would regain full mobility. Physiotherapists are different from surgeons so you would be required to cover the cost of these sessions separately. To be on the safe side, look for referrals from people who once accessed physiotherapy services to give you the best leads.
Reduce Your Weight
After a joint replacement surgery, you don’t want to stress your joint more than it can handle. It would not be appropriate for you to gain weight after a knee joint replacement because excess weight would be radiated to the joint which means you will encounter some sort of deformity on the structures inserted. Always watch your diet, minimize your calorie intake and don’t take excess food than a normal human is supposed to take. If you reduce weight, even the risk of your joint getting damaged is reduced. Obesity is always the precipitator of swollen joints and other types of health issues.
Use Assistive Devices
Apart from physical therapy, you should also be responsible when it comes to healing of your joint. First, use assistive devices to make your knee adapt to walking activities. Take your time, learn step after step until you become fully stable for your walking sessions. If you don’t use assistive devices, you risk injuring the knee because definitely you would start making it to bear all your body weight which is not good at all. Always make sure it is fully healed and regained its mobility capability before you start walking on your own.
Viscos-supplementation injections
When you undergo knee surgery, it is crystal clear that all the synovial joint fluid will be impaired. This fluid is the one that helps the joint to be lubricated and be smooth enough to articulate on the knee cap. Since you may not have enough of this substance, getting a supplementation is always the best way to go. You will be able to move your joint without any significant pain because enough lubrication would be present. These supplementations are normally prescribed by doctor after seeing the volume of the synovial fluid on your knee joint.
Warm the Joint Every Now and Then
First, you need to know that joint is a fatty area where fats could build up and cause joint stiffness or immobility. If you warm your joint, you make all vessels and tissues patent and active at all times. This means you don’t encounter any issues of circulation around your joint. Dormant joints could even develop blood clots so it is necessary to keep your joint warm. On the issue of blood clots, it would be recommended that you take blood thinning products that would be prescribed by the doctors to ensure you don’t encounter any problem.
Joint stiffness is not good and sometimes it occurs due to improper alignment of the artificial structures installed. From the beginning after you get out of theatre, you should be told on how to always ensure that you keep your knee healing a priority. Increased pain, swelling due to pus are some of the signs that should make you call the doctor. The worse of it all is when you get an infection because that would mean even the materials in situ are contaminated. Follow the post-surgical notes and make sure you attend all clinics so that you know what to do.
Keep Yourself Relaxed and Only to Light Activities
Due to several reasons, some people tend to always do activities even with their knee injured after surgery. You find that they provoke the pain and escalate the injury which is not okay because it prolongs their healing duration. People like footballers, cyclists and athletes are advised to stay for up to six months after healing to avoid being injured and causing complications. Joint replacement is not as strong as a natural joint so you will need to always be careful after you undergo the knee replacement surgery. That is the best way to make sure you don’t cause other complications.
To be very frank and specific, ligaments, tendons and soft tissues are weak after surgery. The ones that were since birth are always removed and new ones regenerate so they are not as hard as compared to the original ones. Through rehabilitation and exercises, you are sure of the recovery process and you will even increase the strength of the tissues around the joint. Don’t be so quick to do intense activities on the joint because you could end up injuring the joint completely. As explained above, get assistive devices or make sure you have the best trainer who will make sure you have a lot of nice time training and becoming physically fit. Without any other complications, you will see yourself getting better and improving at a very quick speed.
Nutrition is Very Important to Consider
After surgery, you need nutrients that will help in healing and recovery of the joint. For this reason, make sure you just know what to take. You will need proteins that will assist in tissue and muscle growth to ensure healing occurs quicker than expected. Meat and beans are known to be the good sources of proteins so you should always take proteins. Vitamin C is needed for collagen and connective tissue development. These two structures are important in adding strength to your joint so you will need to take a lot of fruits like oranges. They contain a good source of Vitamin C where you can eat to improve your collagen and connective tissue development. Supplements of these nutrients can work but it would be good if you get them directly from food so that you make everything grow at a normal pace. Calcium is another source and it is needed for proper bone growth and cartilage development. Drink bone soup if you want to get this kind of nutrients for your own benefit.
Conclusion
After knee replacement surgery, there is need to be extra careful and follow all your doctors’ instructions. The surgery may be successful but after that, a slight mistake could cause your whole leg to amputated. Take care, follow what you have been told and you will be able to enjoy excellent outcomes. Healing may not occur as one would expect but it will not take that if no other complication sets in. Attend all physical therapy clinics for proper rehabilitation of your joint.