@stony Hello and welcome to Connect. I think you might be asking about a staff infection which is a risk with surgery. Those infections can be serious. I do know a woman who had a staff infection after surgery for a broken ankle. She was in a rehab facility for months, and had to keep having surgeries to clean out the infection and have a wound vac attached. I think she may have had 7 surgeries for the infection and the doctors were discussing possible amputation of her foot. One of those surgeries removed the hardware. This went on for about a year and I was visiting her at the rehab home.

Doctors also treat some other types of infections long term with months of antibiotics. One of the big issues of antibiotic treatment is stopping the antibiotics too soon which can lead to antibiotic resistance when some of the infection hasn't been killed off by treatment. There is a reason that the doses are timed and prescribed for a specific number of days to keep the levels of drug high enough to be therapeutic because your body is always working to rid itself of the drugs. Those bacteria can then proliferate freely if the antibiotic treatment is stopped. The existence of antibiotic resistant strains of staff bacteria becomes a real threat when doctors don't have drugs that can kill it because the bacteria has evolved resistance to the drug. This is what doctors are trying to prevent.

Your recommended treatment and antibiotic therapy is specific for you, and every patient is different, so there isn't one answer that is right for everyone. Because pain can indicate an infection, it is best to post that question to your surgeon and discuss your progress. I have not had a knee replacement, so I would like to invite others to share their experience of recovery from this surgery.

Hopefully some of our other members such as @johnbishop will share their experience. Is this your first experience with knee replacement?