Knee replacement surgery is reality to many people who are over the age of 50 because many people experience painful and very stiff knees at this age that makes it hard for them to do even the most basic everyday activities starting with climbing the stairs to sitting down and getting back up. And if your knees have come to this stage of stiffness or pain and no treatment has helped your condition you really should consider knee replacement surgery as it can give you back at least some part of the motion you had in you knees when you were young as well as will lessen the pain letting you do everyday activities without having to experience pain.

This surgery whose real name actually is knee arthroplasty is a procedure or rather a surgery during which the patients real knee joint is replaced with and artificial one. This artificial knee joint essentially is a prosthesis which is made out of a combination on plastic and metal materials and is in the shape of your natural knee joint so it can perfectly fit into your knee and replace the old and worn joint.

Before the surgery usually general or spinal anesthesia is administered to the patient and when the anesthesia has taken effect the surgeon makes a 8 to 12 inch cut in the front part of the knee. This cut allows the doctor to remove the damaged joint and shape the surface of your bones so that the artificial joint can be attached to your thigh bone, shin and knee cap. Once that is done the artificial part of your knee will relay on the surrounding muscles as well as ligaments to function properly and let you move using your knee. After the surgery the patient is kept in the hospital for about 3 to 5 days to recover starting a kind of physical therapy the next day after the surgery by standing and slowly walking around with the help of crutches or other walking devices.

Usually it takes about 6 weeks for the patients who had knee replacement surgery to stop relying on some type of walking device and to start moving around on their own comfortably again. And after that the range of motion should improve every day as long as you keep working with your leg by moving it and walking.

This kind of surgery first was performed in 1968 and since this first procedure it is performed very often. In fact about 600 thousands of these type of surgeries are performed each year in United States alone only proving the fact that it is a common procedure that is perfected by surgeons that do them. This surgery usually is done if the patient has severe osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis or post-traumatic arthritis that hadn’t responded to any other treatments and has gotten very painful to live with for example you experience pain even when you are sleeping or you cannot walk anymore because of your knee.

And lastly I should mention risks associated with this knee replacement surgery and its success rate as even the most basic surgeries provide a certain risk and have a certain success rate. The success rate of this surgery is very high especially if you compare knee replacement with other more serious procedures and the risks too are very low. Research shows that about 90 percent of all the people who has had this surgery reports a lot less pain than they had before the procedure. Moreover these people say that their ability to do everyday activities has significantly improved giving them a chance to feel how it is to move without experiencing knee pains. Only about 2 percent of all patients have had some type of complications after this injury. And taking into account that usually these prosthesis last even up to 20 years and there are no big risks in performing this surgery it is not only efficient but a very recommended procedure for all who think its time to do something to better their knee performance.