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Recovering from knee replacement
Joint Replacements | Last Active: Mar 5 8:44pm | Replies (25)Comment receiving replies
Hi there @heyjoe415. I sure appreciate your concern. I try so hard to remember these kinds of issues. So.... I could have missed something. However, the scar on this knee is 4 inches long. The one on my left knee which was done 10 years ago is 8 inches long. I met with my surgeon to watch the video of the surgery and discuss the process that he would be using. I remember being very impressed. I chose this surgeon because of his youth and current training.
I have a video of my surgery and as soon as I can find it in the pile of items to be filed I will pop it in and see what it shows. I do know I was home by noon on the surgery day and started PT the following day. My completion test was when I woke up in the morning and walked to the bathroom without thinking about my knee. The first TKR took almost one year. The recent TKR was performed well within weeks.
One of my medical heroes is Dr. Montori at Mayo Clinic who is an advocate for and author of The Patient Revolution which includes "shared decision making" and "minimally invasive" procedures. I was on his patient advisory group for a couple of years and spent a great deal of time discussing contemporary issues.
I will let you know as soon as I find the video.
May you have happiness and the causes of happiness.
Chris
Replies to "Hi there @heyjoe415. I sure appreciate your concern. I try so hard to remember these kinds..."
Thanks Chris. It is great to have physicians and surgeons who truly care about their patients. So many people have failed recoveries here because they didn't do the work. I'm convinced if they had been more engaged with their surgeon, asking a lot of questions and understanding the procedure and the pre and post op work, their results would be much better.
That requires a curious, involved, and ambitious patient. It's hard to be that person as we age. And to some extent baby boomers like me are influenced by their parents' generation - where asking questions of a Dr. was taboo.
So thanks again. I'm gonna need a TSR in a few years, and if that can be done with minimal trauma, I'm all in!
There might be some confusion regarding the term “minimally invasive”. I think MI is robotic and does not require a quad incision. The access incision is smaller. That’s not to say all robotic TKR is MI. It’s an evolution which by some accounts is becoming the standard. “Less invasive” might be a better term.
I’m still learning about this stuff so take what I say with a grain of salt. I’m about to invest in two TKR’s and since you only get a single shot at this, I’m trying to learn as much as I can prior to choosing a procedure and a doc. So thanks to everyone who is contributing their lived experience here. Mine is entirely abstract, at this point.
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Thanks Chris. Yeah the term "minimally invasive" will mean different things to different people. If your incision was half as long as the first and you recovered so quickly, that sounds like minimally invasive to me.
TKRs have been around since the late 60s. They just keep improving the material used and the procedure itself. Surgeons are used to working in small spaces. I'm glad you're second TKR went so well!