Question regarding knee replacement surgery and arthritis?
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at
6:11 pm
My grandmother needs to have at least one knee replaced, but she worries that she will still have the same arthritic pain? She has osteo arthritis…which is bone…so if no bone, no pain?
All experiences and expertise welcome.
Thank you very much for your help! 
Tagged with: arthritic pain • arthritis • experiences • grandmother
Filed under: Knee Arthritis
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I suggest that replacing the knee will not fix the "root cause" of her problem. It will make her feel a little better, but the real problem will still be there causing degeneration of her body. Why not fix the "root cause" and possibly do what sports figures and athletes do to solve their problems like this, get prolotherapy?
The arthritis is due to many things and you should see a Certified Nutritional Therapist to determine what deficiencies she may have to make her healthy.
All of those suggestions are very inexpensive and easily doable. If they don’t work, you can always have surgery, right?
good luck
After a healing period and physical therapy, she should have no pain in that knee. She may continue to have pain elsewhere, though. These operations are pretty successful, and I know several people who have had them.
My aunt has had both knees replaced and loves her new knees. She no longer has arthritic pain in her knees since she has the new ones. Also, the recovery time is a lot faster than you realize.
While I certainly am always encouraging the least invasive option and that it is true that if prolotherapy fails, one can still have surgery, I remain skeptical about prolotherapy. Very few studies exist to support the use of prolotherapy, and those that do are plagued with small sample size, non-randomized and uncontrolled trials (ie, they are poorly done). Even less evidence exists when talking about prolotherapy in the knee (most studies are directed on the spine). Those that do exist often focus on a young, healthy individual.
Knee arthroplasty, although extreme, is highly sucessful with satisfaction rates of at least 75% and most patients (more than 90%) are pain free or have very little pain by one year. Complications certainly do exist, but they are very infrequent. It is a long rehab process…about 3 months of therapy…during which time the patient is often very uncomfortable. Yet, by the end of that time, most patients state "I wish I had done it years ago."
Her age and overall health should be considered by her surgeon as well as the current state of her knee mechanics before deciding on prolotherapy, surgery or other means of treatment.