When pain is severe, surgery may be the best option for providing relief and restoring function. This section discusses the different surgical options.
Joint Replacement Surgery & Gender
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Since the first experiments more than a century ago, joint replacement surgery has become one of the most successful orthopedic procedures in the world, bringing relief and renewed capability to thousands of patients every year—especially arthritis patients. In the United States, most hip and knee replacements are done because of arthritis. Studies, however, have found […]
Joint Reconstruction
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Joint reconstruction involves rebuilding the architecture of a joint to restore its proper function and to reduce a patient’s pain. Some forms of joint reconstruction include total hip replacement, total knee replacement, ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) reconstruction, and chondroplasty. The hip is a ball-and-socket joint, in which the “ball” is the femoral head—the upper end […]
Hip or Knee Replacement: The Second Time Around
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Remember the day your doctor told you that one of your joints was permanently damaged and that to reduce the pain and improve mobility, you needed to consider having surgery to replace it? The good news, the doctor assured you, was that total joint replacement is usually highly successful. After hearing more about the potential […]
Recovering From Total Hip Replacement
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Movement and good health are intertwined — when one of that pair declines, the other soon follows. When arthritis pain in one or both hips prevents even basic activities such as walking, many people decide that it is time for hip replacement surgery. According to a statistic cited by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, […]
Give Your New Joint a Sporting Chance
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Now that you have a new knee or hip and can move around with considerably less pain, you may ask yourself, What’s next? Should you park this high-tech joint replacement in the garage and bring it out only for leisurely Sunday drives? Or should you take it out for a test drive and see how […]
Informed Consent
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If you are going to have surgery or are planning to participate in a research study, you may have lots of forms to sign. One you should pay special attention to is the informed consent form. The term “informed consent” refers to the permission you give to someone else to take action that will affect […]
Ankle Surgery for Arthritis
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Although arthritis in the knees, hips, and hands gets most of the attention, arthritis in the ankle is a serious and relatively common condition. In fact, about 50,000 new cases of ankle arthritis are diagnosed every year in the United States. Of these, 70% are caused by trauma to the ankle. A sports injury or […]
Preparing for a Hospital Stay
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At some point in their lives, most people have to stay in the hospital. These stays might occur unexpectedly, so you will not always have time to plan for them. But other times you will have the opportunity to make preparations. If you have arthritis, for example, you might wind up in the hospital for […]
Is Weight-Loss Surgery Right for Me?
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Is weight-loss surgery the new holy grail of weight management? Can it help you not only lose weight but also keep it off? How does it work? Who should consider this surgery? What if you have arthritis? For answers to these questions, this article takes a closer look at weight-loss, or bariatric, surgery and what […]
When You’re Considering Surgery
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The chances are good that one day you will need surgery. The surgery may be a simple procedure, keeping you in the hospital for only a short time, or it may be complex, requiring a lengthy stay. Either way, it will most likely be elective surgery — that is, surgery that is planned rather than […]
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