Well, we always talk about diseases and its effects. But what if we talk about the procedure, preparation, and complications of a Knee Replacement surgery? Great idea, many of us know about the disease and its precautions but few of us only know about the actual procedure and complications of a surgery.

Today we are sharing with you all the information that we gained from Dr. Abhishek Kumar, a specialist orthopedics and joint replacement surgeon at Noida in India, while meeting him for an interview regarding knee replacement.

Question: What are the complications of knee replacement?

Answer: Knee replacement surgeries are done usually in the geriatric age group. So there are a few complications. The main complication is periprosthetic fractures as we know that in this age group the bones are very weak. While doing surgeries while putting the implants in we might fracture the bone or after the surgery due to imbalance the patient may fall and the bones can break. So these are the common complications but other complications may include infections, deep vein thrombosis in the legs and so on.

Question: What is the ideal age?

Answer: As it is generally done in geriatric age groups but usually from 50 to 90 is the range but the common age groups are from 60 to 75 after 70 years of age usually we prefer to do one knee at a time and assess the heart condition before planning for a bilateral knee replacement.

Question: What is the life of a knee replacement?

Answer: In the knee replacement surgeries which we are doing these days lasts for 25 years, the average life. But if we use it carefully it can last even for 30 years. And if a patient is obese and it’s if the person is not using it properly the life may reduce to 15 to 20 years. It is a kind of surface replacement.

Question: What is done in a knee replacement?

Answer: As we know in arthritis of the knee there is wearing of the cartilage which is the surface of the bone, so we remove a 5 mm of layer from the surface of the knee and it is replaced by a metal which is cobalt chrome in nature and a plastic highly cross-link plastic comes between which acts as a spacer.

You may also like to read:

•  Is There Any Relation Between Knee Pain and Depression
• Exercise For Knee Pain
• Paget’s Disease of Bone: Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis & Treatment

Question: Preparations for knee replacement?

Answer: Usually, it is done in on the OPD basis. What we do patient has to undergo a set of investigations which include blood to rule out any infection, the level of the hemoglobin and others like urine infection need to be ruled out. Then the patient has to undergo a dobutamine in stress eco which tells the status of the heart which is a very important test.

Question: Research and new developments for knee replacement surgery?

Answer: The knee replacement surgery is an evolving process and these days we’re using navigation technique to get the accurate placement of the implants which is very important for the longevity of the implant. So the survival of the implant depends on the placement position of the implant which is done these days with that navigation technique.