knee replacement failure

Hi NoWhereMan & welcome to the forum. Like you said, I know many that have done the replacement & say they wished they had done it sooner. How long ago was your replacement done? What sort of odds did your surgeon give improvement wise prior to surgery? Have you considered perhaps getting a 2nd opinion?

Sorry for so many questions just trying to get a little more info.

I know some drs, depending on the surgery will say you have say 80% chance of improvement, just using this as an example. Have you ever tried Voltaren, its available only by script & for arthritis pain? It comes in gel form & oral. I prefer the gel & have found it helps with my knees when they get bad. I have had numerous scopes for tears, adhesions, cleaning out arthritis & ACL issues. Some people have good results with TENS Units, what about moist heat & getting in a jacuzzi or heated pool. A heated pool helps arthritic bones, you cannot injure yourself in water which is another plus.

I can understand being hesitant going forward with more surgery. The word MIGHT reduce the pain cuaght my eye. Keep us posted.

At least consider the Voltaren gel, its topical but a script will be needed. You can go to Drugs.com & read about it. At least it will not be anything that will mess with your head.

Thank, again, Susie. I'm going to keep that in mind to discuss at next visit...depending on whether or not I make a decision to go forward with disk replacement.



Thanks, Abilene. I'm pretty comfortable with my selection of the top ortho practice in the region. When George Bush had his knee replacement, he flew from North Texas to Chicago, to the practice I go to, to have his done.

The functional life of knee replacements is primarily dependent on the use and abuse one gives it...so it can vary widely and has to be generalized. In today's technology, a knee replacement can only be replaced once due to how much bone gets cut off each time, so without counting on a leapfrog improvement in one's lifetime, the rule of thumb on not having it done too early in life is to avoid running out of options when much older. The disk replacement is a simpler operation which does not involve the bonded upper and lower metal pieces, so it does not count as a replacement. It certainly is, therefore, a simpler operation—although any general anesthesia operation should not be considered minor—and requires PT rehab (usually about half of the effort which follows full replacement). Both my surgeon and the 2nd opinion surgeon had done the disk replacement; despite their expertise, neither had full success in all cases with it eliminating the issues, so I understand and greatly appreciate their hesitancy to commit to success in my case. It's a bit of a gamble on my part whether to commit to the time, effort, resources, etc when there is less than very high likelihood of success.