Physical Therapy Avon

I’m having my knee replaced soon. Will it hurt afterwards? When will I start walking? What should I expect?

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The short answers are: yes, soon and success. The pain you experience after a knee replacement will be different than the knee pain you had prior to surgery. You will have post-surgical swelling, incision and trauma pain when you awaken after surgery, but what you will not have is that deep joint pain from the bone on bone rubbing that you currently experience. The good news is that this post surgical associated pain will start to diminish soon after you begin walking. You could start walking as soon as the day of your surgery and usually no later than the day after surgery. You will be nervous about putting weight on your new joint at first, but will quickly figure out that it only increases the pain minimally or not at all. You will also discover the more you use it the faster the post- surgical swelling decreases and the better it feels. A few other comments that I hear a lot from patients after a Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) are: Do they always use staples instead of stitches? I get fatigued so quick, is this normal? The answer to both of these questions is yes, staples are almost exclusively used with all TKA and you can expect to fatigue much quicker after experiencing such a large trauma. Do not worry, the staples hold very well and the fatigue will fade away as your knee heals. Almost everyone questions if they should have had their knee replaced during the first week and nobody regrets it after the first month.