Shoulder Replacement. The surgeon removes the damaged or diseased part of the shoulder with a shoulder replacement, replacing it with an artificial joint. A shoulder replacement is considered major surgery and can have a lengthy recovery period.
In general, research has found that orthopedic surgeries, or those involving bones, are the most painful. However, researchers also found that some minor surgeries or those classed as keyhole or laparoscopic could also cause significant pain.
For a shoulder replacement, that's usually done as an outpatient surgery, but based on the type of surgery, you could move the shoulder within one week to four weeks, and hopefully recovering in a much shorter time frame than a hip or knee.
Knee replacement pain: The week following surgery
You should expect to stay in the hospital for several days following knee replacement surgery. This is often considered the most painful stage of the recovery process. Your doctor will prescribe medications to help you manage your pain level.
Another pro of hip replacement is that the rehab is generally the easiest of all joint replacement surgeries. You're often standing up and bearing weight within a day of surgery.
And how about the results for patients? A hip replacement is a much less painful operation. People are on crutches for a while, and then their hips feel normal. But it takes six months to a year to recover from total knee surgery, and even then, the knee just doesn't feel normal.
It hurts more than you imagine.
"People compare it to hip replacement, but knee replacement is a lot more painful early on," says licensed physical therapist Robert Fay, clinical director at Armonk Physical Therapy and Sports Training in New York.
You can expect some pain and swell for a few months after surgery. Improved surgical techniques and new technology, such as robotic arm-assisted technology, makes the knee replacement recovery process quicker and less painful.
A knee replacement is major surgery, so is normally only recommended if other treatments, such as physiotherapy or steroid injections, haven't helped reduce pain or improve mobility.
Hip replacement surgery is one of the most successful operations in all of medicine. Since the early 1960s, improvements in joint replacement surgical techniques and technology have greatly increased the effectiveness of total hip replacement.
Hip and knee replacements are the most commonly performed joint replacements, but replacement surgery can be performed on other joints, as well, including the ankle, wrist, shoulder, and elbow.
As knee arthritis progresses, the knee becomes much looser and more unstable. In some cases, this is mild. In other cases, it is substantial enough that cause the patient to fall. Patients who have bone-on-bone arthritis and are starting to fall because of it should strongly consider surgery.
Doctors do sometimes recommend that people under age 60 wait to undergo a knee replacement procedure, because these artificial joints typically last only about 15 to 20 years. If someone younger gets the procedure, it's likely that the joint will need to be replaced again down the line.
You shouldn't downhill ski or play contact sports such as football and soccer. In general, avoid sports that require jerking, twisting, pulling, or running. You should be able to do lower-impact activities, such as hiking, gardening, swimming, playing tennis, and golfing.
Therefore, expected full recovery times for replacement hips tend to be shorter than for replacement knees. Generally speaking, a complete recovery for a knee replacement is 3-12 months and for a hip replacement is 2-6 months.
The 0.3% regret rate of our newest study is much smaller compared to other, common yet serious surgeries. Interestingly, knee replacement surgery has a dissatisfactory rate of 6-30%.
Patients undergoing total knee replacement are highly likely to experience fatigue before the surgery and six months following the procedure. It's normal to feel tired frequently after the surgery. Sometimes, people feel exhausted even without performing routine chores or strenuous exercises.
Recovery is slow
While it's different for everyone and depends on the type of knee surgery you've had, many people are surprised by how long it takes to recover. The time it takes to start doing simple tasks around the home, get back to work and importantly bending your new and improved knee may catch you by surprise.
Robotic knee replacements, one of the types of knee replacements considered to be the latest technology, use a robot to assist the surgeon, as well as patient-specific implantation guides which are image-guided.
Minimally-invasive quadriceps-sparing total knee replacement is a new surgical technique that allows surgeons to insert the same time-tested reliable knee replacement implants through a shorter incision using surgical approach that avoids trauma to the quadriceps muscle (see figure 1) which is the most important muscle ...