Rehab Select Blog

If you have recently had joint replacement therapy, or such a surgery is in your near future, you may be wondering if you're still going to be able to enjoy time with your family and friends as you recover. After all, no matter how much we look forward to all that comes with having kids and grandkids over to visit, it can still be tiring and challenging – even under the best of circumstances.

Arthritis is a progressively painful condition that often eventually requires joint replacement surgery, especially when the disease impacts the hip or knee joints. Over one million Americans have hip or knee replacements each year.

Joint replacement surgery, which replaces a damaged or diseased joint with an artificial joint, has helped millions of people reduce chronic pain and restore mobility and independence. Knees and hips are the joints most frequently replaced via these procedures, with over a million Americans having one of these joints replaced every year, according the National Institutes of Health. So why do so many people need joint replacement? In many cases, arthritis is the answer to that question, as the disease causes joint damage and deterioration that can lead to chronic pain and significant disability, severely impacting quality of life.

If you are considering joint replacement surgery, knowing exactly what you're getting into is essential to making a well-informed decision about whether or not this surgery is right for you. Should you decide to move forward with surgery, knowing what to expect from the procedure, as well as the recovery and rehabilitation period, is very important to ensure you're prepared to make solid decisions about your care throughout the process. In the interest of helping you learn what you need to know to make these decisions with confidence, let's go over the basic facts on joint replacement procedures.

If you will be having a knee or hip replaced to treat joint damage done by arthritis, you should know that how your recovery and rehabilitation is handled is as important as the joint replacement surgery itself in terms of achieving an optimal outcome – reduced pain, increased mobility, and improved quality of life. That means having a good plan in place well ahead of your procedure date for your recovery and rehabilitation period is essential. Here are some planning tips that can help you ensure the best recovery.

Knee replacement procedures are surgeries that remove part or all of a damaged or diseased knee joint, replacing it with a prosthetic, or artificial, joint. These procedures are the most common form of joint replacement surgery and are performed in approximately 600,000 patients every year in the United States. So why do so many people need knee replacement? Here we'll look into what conditions commonly lead to knee replacement surgery and a number of facts and statistics about these procedures that may be helpful to those considering a means of treatment.

Joint replacement surgery is a procedure in which an orthopedic surgeon removes part or all of a diseased or damaged joint – most commonly the knee or hip – and inserts a prosthetic as replacement. The goals of this procedure are to reduce chronic pain and improve mobility in patients, goals that these procedures achieve in the majority of cases. So why do people need these procedures? While there are many conditions that can damage joints and create a need for joint replacement, there are some that are more common than others. Among those are these 3 conditions that often lead to joint replacement:

Do you have knee arthritis? If so, you're in good company. The knee is a very complex joint that is subjected to a great deal of stress every day. These factors contribute to the very common nature of knee problems, which affect more than 6 million people over the age of 62 and another 5 million between the ages of 40 and 62. Among the most common problems is arthritis, with the knee being the most frequently affected joint. Educating yourself can help you manage the impact of knee arthritis. So what do you need to know?

Effective rehabilitation therapy is crucial in the recovery of knee and hip replacement patients, helping them to regain strength, flexibility, and mobility, speed recovery, and avoid complications. However, patients are generally offered several short term rehab options as they work to plan their procedures with their health care team. For the average patient, who will have limited experience with rehabilitation therapy, choosing among these options can be confusing. Knowing what you can expect from the most common rehab options can make choosing a lot easier, so here we'll go over those details.

If you are having knee replacement surgery in the near future, you have probably already been told that effective follow-up care is essential to a great outcome. In fact, the care and therapy you receive after surgery can be just as important to a successful outcome as the procedure itself. So how does the average patient go about picking the right follow-up care after knee replacement surgery?