A knee joint operates as a hinge joint between the femur (upper leg bone) and tibia and fibula (lower leg bones). Over the years, the areas where these bones meet could succumb to wear and tear and start aching. That’s when finding a knee pain doctor near me online will become inevitable. After being examined by the top pain doctor in NYC, he or she might recommend doing a knee replacement surgery.
What is a knee replacement surgery?
It is a surgical procedure where worn out parts of a knee joint are replaced with artificial ones—Prostheses. Surgery is usually picked as the last resort. It is never recommended to people who can be treated in other ways. Mainly, surgery of the knee is done to ease pain and allow victims to lead active lives. If you have pain and the drugs and/or physical therapy or minimally invasive procedures for pain management alone are not helping, your pain doctor NYC might recommend total knee surgery. There are three types of surgeries of the knee your doctor can perform: Total Knee Arthroplasty(TKA), Revision Arthroplasty or Unilateral Knee Arthroplasty(UKA). The top physician picked from knee pain doctor near me search engine results will select the best treatment method for you. Meanwhile, let’s discuss the Total Knee Arthroplasty procedure next.
Pain doctor NYC Can Guide you if Total Knee Arthroplasty is needed
Commonly known as total knee replacement surgery, TKA is a procedure where a surgeon removes the entire cartilage and bone from the knee joint surface. Then, he or she substitutes the removed parts with an artificial metal and plastic knee surface. In particular, your surgeon will substitute your tibial, femoral and patellar (3 articular surfaces of your knee) for three matching prosthetic parts. The tibial part is known to consist of high-density polyethyle spacer that is either attached to an exchangeable modular insert or a metal tibial tray.
The femoral component is usually metallic with circular surfaces that look like the usual femoral condylar curves. The patellar part consists of a high-density polyethylene material or a metal supported material. The top knee pain doctor near me and you could confirm that there are more than one hundred and fifty knee implant models. Each is unique and is usually picked based on the number of compartments that must be restored and whether you have retained your posterior cruciate ligament.
About Prostheses used for TKA
There are two kinds of prostheses any knee pain doctor near me or you can use to repair your knee joint: constrained and unconstrained prostheses. The most widely used of the two are unconstrained prostheses. These depend on one’s soft tissues to stabilize the installed femoral, tibial and patellar components.
Constrained prostheses designs offer more stability and reduced motion of the knee joint. They usually have closely attached tibial and femoral components, leading to decreased joint movements. As a result, constrained designs are picked for Revision Athroplasty or when there is substantial ligament stability.
These designs are considered rigid and tend to increase the forces tolerated by the non-deformable components instead of those dispelled by soft tissues. That’s why constrained prostheses are likely to loosen and succumb to wear and tear and fatigue.
Why you should care to have TKA done
Your pain doctor NYC specialist might decide to do a total knee arthroplasty surgery on your knee as a means of removing pain. After surgery, your knee is bound to function normally even if you live with arthritis. TKA surgery is often recommended when physical therapy, injections and drugs have failed to relieve your pain and discomfort.
The aim of this procedure is to lessen your pain, boost your day to day life and improve your knee function. Any adult person who struggles with knee pain due to an injury or a disease can undergo a total knee replacement surgery. If you have considerable immobility and pain prior to the procedure, any knee pain doctor near me and everyone else will mostly recommend surgery.
Thus, TKA is only done when it’s really important. There is nothing unusual about this surgery, especially, in the U.S where about seven hundred thousand people endure it every year.
How Total Knee Arthroplasty is done
First, this type of surgery is done in a theatre after a patient is given anesthesia. It took a knee pain doctor near me two to three hours to complete this surgery on me. After the process, I and other patients were taken to a recovery room where we were left to rest for many hours. People recover differently, meaning that some need more time to recover than others. Mostly, patients spend one to four days in the hospital and during their stay they receive medication to speed up the healing process.
In order to reduce Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT), a condition where blood clots form in the veins, patients are advised to exercise before undergoing surgery. They can do this via the direction of their physical therapists. Soon after surgery, your pain doctor NYC clinic will prescribe some medicines or give you a shot to prevent DVT. Additionally, your doctor will recommend use of compression boots until you are able to move around. Once you rise up and start walking, they will ask you to wear antiembolism compression stockings. These fit well around your foot, ankle, lower leg and the knee itself and they are very good at preventing blood clots.
Rehabilitation process – physical therapy
After undergoing Total Knee Arthroplasty, you will be asked to start moving your feet and knees the soonest possible. Sometimes the best pain doctor NYC area will make use of a continuous passive motion device that is able to raise and move your leg in a gradual manner. It will work perfectly while you are still in bed. Physical therapy should begin in the day of surgery or the following one to help a patient recover quickly and go back home. It should be continued even after one is discharged from the hospital.
Whether you will have it at home or at a medical facility is not the issue. The imperative thing is to attend your physical therapy sessions as directed by your physician. Your pain doctor NYC clinic will design a rehabilitation program that is suitable for you. It will include workouts that are known to remove knee stiffness after surgery. Once your knee is no longer stiff, you can bend and straighten it out as far as you wish. Therapy also improves your leg muscles and your overall ability to function using your legs.
Goals will be set all through the rehabilitation process and the picked knee pain doctor near me expert will help one attain each one of these. If you follow the program to the letter, you will soon regain strength and mobility in your knee. And to increase your chances, it’s important to avoid doing activities that could strain your knee area. In about three to six weeks after surgery you will be able to resume your duties.
After many months you will be totally active and pain-free. The only activities you will no longer be able to participate in as you did previously are sports. However, to keep your body healthy and fit, you could continue walking, swimming and riding your bicycle.
How to have a successful Total Knee Arthroplasty surgery
According to knee pain doctor near me and researchers, two chief factors determine the success rate of any TKA surgical process. First, you need to consider how experienced your surgeon is and then pick a hospital that has a good reputation. One study revealed that the surgery results were higher in patients who were treated by a surgeon who had done more than six TKA surgeries every year. Second, success was found where surgery was done in a clinic that completed over twenty-five joint replacement surgeries annually. Good results were characterized by lower occurrences of complications after surgery and improved knee function.
What complications are associated with TKA?
- Infection – An infection will worry any knee pain doctor near me. To prevent it from happening, you will be given antibiotics within one hour of leaving the operation room. More antibiotics will be given in the next twenty-four hours too to prevent an infection from developing in the form of a wound. Besides medicines, your doctor will remove extra liquid from the treated joint.
Your physician will also guide you on how you can change your lifestyle and speed up the healing process. To know if you have an infection, see if you have fever, pain that worsens abruptly, redness, swelling and chills. Make sure you call your pain doctor NYC if you experience these symptoms. If nothing seems to clear the infection, you might go back to the operating room to remove the fitted prostheses. If this happens, your doctor will wait until your infection clears to fit the artificial knee surface components again.
- Formation of a blood clot – Just like other surgeries, a total knee replacement surgery increases your chances of developing a blood clot in a vein. As aforementioned, thrombosis or the formation of a clot is likely to attack the deep veins of your legs—DVT. If you notice pain and swelling in legs, call your top pain doctor NYC immediately.
- Joint stiffness – This is a common problem after one goes through the TKA surgery. Even if physical therapy is maintained, some people will experience stiff joints and be totally unable to bend or straighten their knee. This is a problem that returns many to the operating table where their doctor repairs the knee under anesthesia.
- Failure – Although total knee replacement surgery is the best solution any knee pain doctor near me recommends, it has its chances of failure. According to most research studies, results obtained from a perfectly done TKA surgery can last for fifteen to twenty years. However, some people will go back to their doctors before this period ends. Why is this so? A number of reasons can affect the lifespan of a TKA surgery results. These are an infection, bone fractures around the knee implants, loosening of the knee implants, and lack of stability. If failure occurs, doctors perform the revision surgery we aforementioned.
Other options than TKA
There is no doubt that TKA can be so useful when the circumstances are right. However, it has its risks and can sometimes be swapped for another less complicated medical procedure. So, it is advisable to discuss the right course of action with your pain doctor NYC specialist. In most cases, patients are taken through therapies that do not involve surgery at all. This is particularly those who have knee pain because of osteoarthritis or another form of arthritis.
First, you will be encouraged to exercise and improve your diet to lose weight. A tiny amount of weight loss can reduce your knee pain because knees are subjected to roughly 4 pounds of pressure per pound of body weight. NSAIDs drugs such as naproxen and ibuprofen and acetaminophens are greatly recommended. Physical therapy can strengthen your knee area muscles and remove pressure from the joint itself. This will improve joint movement and get rid of stiffness.
A steroid-like drug may be used to give you a shot that could get rid of knee pain. If pain doesn’t go away, any good knee pain doctor near me or you will try a less invasive form of surgery before operating on your knee fully. A good example is an arthroscopy surgery where a doctor uses an arthroscope to see what’s inside your knee joint. If he or she notices any amount of damage, they will go on and repair it via a tiny skin incision.
For patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, arthroscopy cannot be helpful for long. Another sort of surgery is called osteotomy and it entails cutting of the leg bone and realigning it before leaving it to heal. The main goal is to move excess weight from the sick area of the knee to a healthier part. If you are a senior person who is older than sixty years, or you live with rheumatoid arthritis, osteotomy could be ideal for you.
Finally, you can have your pain doctor NYC do a partial knee replacement surgery prior to doing the TKA one. Also called unicompartmental knee replacement surgery, partial knee replacement surgery is all about the replacement of only one section of your knee joint.
Conclusion
If you feel any amount of knee pain, have your knee checked by the leading pain doctor NYC area has. Whether the pain is due to an injury you had while playing a sport or when you suffered an accident, it can be eliminated via total knee replacement surgery if this is the right treatment for you. The procedure is ideal for patients who have arthritis too and it can be so effective if done professionally. So, analyse your search engine results for knee pain doctor near me perfectly before picking the right professional.