Total Knee Replacement Recovery: A Week-by-Week Timeline

61-year-old Sunita lives on the third floor of her building in Nagpur. She climbed the stairs easily until a few days ago. Her right knee began to hurt after long walks. Her right knee began to hurt after long walks.

At first it was mild, gone by the next morning. Two weeks on, she could not stand up from a chair without pushing off with both arms. Her doctor called it advanced osteoarthritis and told her the joint needed replacing.

She is far from alone in this. Add up the research from across India, and knee osteoarthritis shows up in about 47% of older adults, close to one in two.

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And yet plenty of people still put off knee replacement surgery for years. Fear of the operation is part of it. So is not knowing what the weeks after surgery actually involve.

Why Do Knee Replacement?

Surgeons don’t jump to surgery first. Medication, physiotherapy, and weight loss come before replacement is even discussed. Doctors usually bring it up once patients report:

●      Pain while sitting, lying down, or walking

●      Stiffness in the legs

●      X-rays showing cartilage has worn away, sometimes down to bare bone

●      A daily life that keeps shrinking despite trying everything else first

Sunita reached that point three years before her surgery. That year she skipped her granddaughter’s wedding sangeet. Standing through the whole event would have hurt too much, maybe enough to bring her to tears.

What Actually Happens on the Operating Table?

After the anesthesia has taken its effect, the doctor will remove the injured cartilage and bones at the place where the thigh bone joins the shin bone. Metal and plastic components go in to take over the job a healthy knee joint would normally do. Surgery typically runs one to two hours. Most patients are under spinal or general anesthesia the whole time.

Sunita’s operation took ninety minutes.