Why Do the Knees Get Damaged?
You know quite well that the basis of leading a healthy and active life is to be able to remain mobile as long as possible. For maintaining good control on movement and remaining active, your knee should remain fit and happy. However, in most cases of geriatrics, or even before going into your 50’s, you start to feel the effects of arthritis and osteoporosis, the first victim being your knees. The knees lose their ability to be bent or flexed, leading to restrictions in walking, running, sitting on the ground and bending. The main causes of knee defects are attributed to damage in the tissues leading to excessive pain and inflammation. With age, the cartilages in your knees start wearing away, leading to the rubbing of the bones against each other, leading to abrasion. This leads to the pain and your mobility also gets negatively affected as a result.
Knee Replacement Surgery and its Benefits
As the pain and damage of the knees increase with age, it may result in complete immobility if not treated in time. At the very initial stage, regular calcium intake can reduce the damage to some extent. But when the problem is serious, knee replacement surgery turns out to be the best solution to for arresting the damage and the pain in a dramatic way. More than 90% of patients suffering from acute knee – related problems, have found relief through knee replacement. The best knee replacement doctors in India use the knee replacement surgery in order to treat osteoarthritis. What is basically done in this surgery is insertion of a mechanical implantation replacing severely damaged and / or arthritic joints of the knees. Knee replacement operation can be of two main types:
- Partial knee replacement surgery
- Total knee replacement procedure
Total Knee Replacement Surgery
This is what the majority of patients opt for or are advised by the doctors. In this type of surgery, your thighbone is covered by a casing made of metal, and also puts a plastic covering on the shinbone. Thus, the uneven and irregular surfaces of the knee joint are replaced by smooth metal and plastic surfaces. Often, if the surgeon feels it necessary, the surface beneath the knee–cap is replaced with a plastic casing.Thus, the knee joint gets to function almost normally with a smoother surface, and the pain is reduced considerably.
Partial Knee Replacement Procedure
In this case, only the damaged part of the knee or that which is most affected by osteoarthritis, is replaced. Thus, this surgery is a minor one compared to total knee replacement. There is obviously much lesser loss of blood and bone, as the size of incision is much lesser. The patient also feels less pain during and after the procedure. They also recover faster in the post – surgery phase.
However, the main con of the partial knee replacement procedure is that your condition is not healed totally. If in future, you develop arthritis in some other part of the knee joint, then another bit of surgery has to be done by some of the best knee surgeons in India.