When basic activities of daily life, such as walking, working, shopping and recreation are inhibited or prevented by pain, it may be time to have hip or knee replacement surgery. These surgeries have put many Americans back on their feet, allowing them to go on living active lives. Making the decision to undergo joint replacement is a choice about your quality of life.
In hip and knee replacements, an orthopedic surgeon replaces a damaged joint with an artificial joint (called a prosthesis). In the United States alone, hundreds of thousands of total joint replacements are performed each year. The prostheses enable the joint to move as a normal joint would.
Hip Replacement
A total hip replacement replaces your arthritic hip joint and eliminates the damaged bearing surfaces that are causing you pain. Hip replacement surgery removes the arthritic ball of the upper femur (thighbone) as well as the damaged cartilage from the hip socket. The ball is replaced by a metal or ceramic ball that is firmly fixed to a stem inserted into the femur. The socket is replaced with a metal cup, which is fixed to the socket.
The design of the implant offers you renewed stability and minimizes the wear process. There are several benefits from your hip replacement, but most important your new hip will eliminate pain, provide you more mobility and will stop additional deterioration of your hip.
During a total hip replacement procedure a metal stem is inserted into your thighbone (femur). Attached to the neck of the stem is a hip ball, just over an inch in diameter. The hip ball fits into a liner. Together, the ball and liner create the new joint. The liner is inserted into a metal shell that is anchored to your pelvis. In terms of fixation, your surgeon has the choice of anchoring the hip implants securely to bone using either cement fixation or fixation by 'bone ingrowth'. Your surgeon will select the design of the hip replacement and size of femoral ball to give you the range of motion and stability that you need to function.
Knee Replacement
A total knee replacement replaces your diseased bone and cartilage and resurfaces it with orthopedic implant - eliminating the damaged bearing surfaces that are causing you pain. The design of the implant offers you renewed stability and minimizes wear. There are several benefits from your knee replacement, but most importantly, your new knee will eliminate pain, provide you more mobility and will stop additional deterioration of your knee.
During surgery, the joint is exposed by an incision, made down the center of the knee. The damaged bone ends are then resurfaced with components designed to recreate the natural contours of the bones in a healthy knee. The metal and plastic implants allow the bones to smoothly glide against each other, similar to natural cartilage.
Total knee replacement offers the greatest quality of life improvement of all operations. It has one of the highest success rates and one of the best outcomes.
