when do you need joint replacement surgery?
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When Do You Need Joint Replacement Surgery?
Having your joints replaced is not an experience you necessarily want to go through, but considering the fact that it can help relieve the pain and constant mental and physical agony that is caused by various types of joint problems (primarily arthritis), it is often the most prudent choice to make. Understanding the process can definitely help alleviate much of the apprehensions about surgery, but educating yourself about the process can be the difference between accepting surgery and postponing it – at the cost of your own suffering.
Arthroplasty Explained
Partial or total knee replacement surgery and hip replacement surgery come under the medical field called arthroplasty. Arthroplasty is the field of surgical medicine that deals with replacing, remodeling or realigning the problematic joint in order to make movement easier and relieve the sufferer of often excruciating pain that makes normal life impossible. Older versions of this procedure involved several alternatives to replacing the joint, including inter-positional, re-sectional and resurfacing arthroplasty, among others. Over the last five decades, the best options are considered to be prosthetic replacements, which involve the introduction of an artificial joint that either partially or completely replaced the affected joint.
Knee and hip replacement surgery involves using artificial, long-lasting materials, and the objective is to allow the knee joint to move normally as if it were using the natural components of a healthy joint. In the case of knee joints, the knee may be partially or completely replaced with prosthetic parts, and post-recovery movement is dramatically enhanced, improving muscle tone as time progresses. Hip replacement surgeons also use either partial or complete hip prosthetics to repair hip joints and the procedure is now one of the most common forms of orthopedic surgery.
Modern arthroplasty primarily uses metals like titanium that are resistant to corrosion, as well as complex polymer plastics such as PMMA, which is also used to manufacture Plexiglass®, and ceramics, which are fast-becoming the material of choice because of they are light and strong, as well as chemically inert. A prosthetic joint is typically a combination of these materials.
What Can It Offer You?
The benefits of joint replacement are extensive, but essentially, it allows the patient to resume a normal lifestyle that may have once been impossible due to various factors. Arthritis in its many debilitating forms is one of the primary reasons to opt for arthroplasty, but fracture damage is also one of the conditions wherein replacement may be advised. A patient who has undergone arthroplasty may regain their mobility completely, In every sense, the practice of arthroplasty is a godsend that allows people with degenerative joint diseases and fracture-oriented damage to live normally.
