subject: Advantages Of Partial Knee Replacement Over Other Surgeries [print this page] Advantages Of Partial Knee Replacement Over Other Surgeries
Arthritis is one of most common diseases that is detected among the people, growing older. It leads to severe pain that is, in most of the cases, found to be unbearable for the patients. This is when they have to opt for knee replacement treatments. It is a large and invasive surgery, during the conduction of which, the damaged bone or joint is cut and replaced, thereby rearranging the muscle to place a prosthetic or artificial joint in place of the original one. Another replacement technique that is commonly used by the arthritic patients is the partial knee replacement surgery.
In case of arthritis, variety of cases have been reported. In some of them, the whole knee joint is injured, while in few, only a part of the bone needs to be replaced. In some of the cases, only one side of the knee joint is diseased that needs to be replaced. This is where a partial knee replacement is considered as the best option. This is the replacement technique that has many advantages over other knee replacement surgical alternatives. Reduction of the recovery time taken as well as the size of incision that is made are the two most significant benefits of this knee joint replacement technique.
In case of the total knee replacement, the entire knee joint is replaced including the lower leg, consisting of tibia and fibula, the bottom of the upper leg bone called femur and the entire kneecap known as patella. Whereas, in case of the partial knee replacement, rather than replacing the entire knee joint, only a part of it that is diseased is replaced with a prosthesis. In simple words, if a kneecap is diseased, it will only replace that portion with a prosthetic kneecap. The incision made during these surgeries is quite small in comparison to other techniques and hence the people prefer this mode over others.
The total knee replacement surgery is extremely invasive and hence can be risky enough. In addition to this, even the recovery during the post-surgical stage involves a full year of rehabilitation session. In fact, in this technique, the more bone cut, the larger will be the incision, which in turn, does more damages to the surrounding tissues. On the contrary, the partial knee replacement is less-traumatic with lesser bone cut and less recovery and rehab time taken. Even the blood loss due to small incision is quite less. These are the main reasons that draw the attention of the inmates towards the partial mode of knee joint replacement.
Many people think that the knee prosthesis will last for long, but remember, the artificial knee joints that take the place of the original ones after the knee replacement surgery have the chances of wearing out. Thus, one must stay away from activities that involve harder use of the knees as it might pose a negative effect on your prosthetic joint. Undoubtedly, the success rates of the partial knee replacement surgery are higher, but at the same time its can also not be guaranteed that all the time this surgery is conducted, it will be successful. These are some of the significant points that one must be aware of while making a choice of the knee joint replacement technique.
