The Crucial Role of Rehabilitation After Joint Replacement Surgery

Joint replacement: postoperative experience

Professor Rana Hinman, physiotherapist 

One of the things that's really important to consider and I think most people realise this anyway when they see a surgeon and decide that arthroplasty or joint replacement is the way they want to go is that there's quite  a commitment required from the patient in the lead-up to the surgery but particularly in  those months afterwards to commit to their  rehab program because let's face it arthroplasty  is all about getting a new joint but it's not  just about the joint you need to get the muscles  strong again you need to get you know surgery is quite painful, it's very invasive  and results in a lot of muscle dysfunction limitation to function in those early stages so  there's quite a lot of commitment required from  patients to their physiotherapy rehab routine  whether it's going to be a lot of exercise  a lot of hard work and you know particularly, with respect to knee replacements it's often  really painful doing your exercises and getting  those muscles strong again after the surgical procedure and that often takes quite a few months  and in fact many patients have to go on and have inpatient rehabilitation after their  procedure which just shows that the  dedication required to that

Judith Nguyen, osteoarthritis patient

After the joint knee replacements there was a lot of physio in hospital. I was in hospital about a week  I guess because of having both knees done and the physios came round regularly twice a day and I did  all sort of ink exercises to strengthen my knees but I was mostly focused on flex and getting them  to bend and then when I got home I went to physio two or three times a week doing the same kind of  exercises mostly to get mobility making them bend, yeah it was really important and it  doesn't happen in five minutes it took weeks really six weeks to be realistic  I think before physio said you're great. Because you do reach a point where there's very little improvement after that so, the window of opportunity is quite small. So the first six weeks that's where you make the most gains, after that it's kind of maintenance using  your joints so that they don't know get stiff and what have you but there is really just that  small window to get your best possible outcome