The knee prosthesis, a solution for osteoarthritis
Written by:90% of the operated patients have immediate pain relief and a great improvement in their mobility
Osteoarthritis can occur in any knee or in part in any part. When the patient usually does by developing consultation as the main symptom. Problems of knee stability, mobility, clicking, locking sensation usually also appear.
Do I need a knee replacement?
The orthopedic surgeon makes a first explorations and tests. The most important is the radiograph made with the patient standing. Thus, we can make the diagnosis more or less severe osteoarthritis, along with your age and discomfort describing the patient, and how this affects their quality of life, help you make the decision to place a prosthesis or, conversely , wait.
Since the patient consults with first symptoms that suggest you have osteoarthritis, until he decides to put a prosthesis, often spend time. The main reason is that we always try to lengthen the maximum time to put a prosthesis, because the prosthesis has a half-life.
The sooner a prosthesis must be replaced before, so that sometimes depends on the patient's age goes down, we can raise to any intervention which alleviates the pain and win some time before placing a knee.
Replacement knee prosthesis
Prostheses no longer a surgical material and none of them lasts a lifetime. Eventually loosen and suffer wear. The knee usually last about 15 years after implantation. When this starts to fail, we must make a replacement. A replacement is a much more complex surgery that placing a primary prosthesis. Beat time to time the prosthesis is to beat the joint itself, but may not be at the expense of the poor quality of life of patients.
A prosthesis can fail for many reasons: because of an infection, wear the prosthesis, fractures of the bones near the prosthesis, for example. But a critical factor in the length of the prosthesis is the experience of the surgeon who performs prosthetic surgery.
It is shown that few surgeons placed prostheses a year, have higher rates of complications. That is, their prostheses often loosen before. The questions addressed in the consultation patients are aimed to know how many points you take or how many days they will be admitted, when asked who should do is how many places the knee surgeon during the year.
Knee replacement surgery
Total knee surgery should be a last resort surgery. Instead, it is best to first place a partial denture. This happens with a Unicondylar prosthesis or a prosthetic patella patellofemoral call for those patients with knee osteoarthritis only isolated in the kneecap, very typical in people with a history of fractures. These prostheses have a shorter recovery than dentures.
The technique involves removing the bone portion of the femoral condyles and tibia, and surgical equipment and replacing it is shaped like a joint, with mating surfaces and minimize friction is placed.
The great advances in the last decade are innovation in materials, increasingly resistant to allow more time to prosthetics. Also a major improvement is the control of postoperative pain, enabling a faster recovery, tolerating movements and exercises earliest form.
Innovative diagnosis of infection of a knee prosthesis
One of the latest innovations was not related to the surgery itself, but in how to detect infection in the prosthesis when symptoms persist after surgery. It is a new test, with few months of life, and still not widespread, which is done in the query through a sample of fluid from the knee and with a device similar to a pregnancy test. The test detects a protein generated by leukocytes only in the presence of bacteria, called alpha-defensin-1 and within minutes the situation of this prosthesis is known. It has high reliability, well above the available evidence so far and has been a breakthrough for infection before which he will be making treatment decisions.
Knee replacement, rehabilitation
90% of patients undergoing total knee replacement have great pain relief and a great improvement in their mobility, therefore a great improvement in quality of life. Recovery time is usually variable and depends on each one, but typically lasts about six days to go home and about 6 months to a normal life. During the first month should make a fairly sedentary and focus on rehabilitation. After the first month you can go normal life recovering gradually.
Within three months the improvement is already very noticeable and can perform many routine activities and six months patients are beginning to forget their operation.
After surgery knee prosthesis is not advisable to perform high-impact activities, such as jumping or running as usual, beyond the specific races to catch the bus or to prevent a grandson crossing the street, but if you can perform activities such as walking, hiking, cycling, swimming, aerobics, golf or even make soft trekking, so there is usually no major limitations to the elderly, who previously performed extreme sport.
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