Are you researching knee replacements? Are you experiencing knee pain or swelling of the knee or your knee is locking up on you. What should you do? It could be that your knee problems are due to arthritis. If you’re having knee problems, they’re not going away without treatment so it’s important for you to schedule an appointment with a knee specialist like Dr. J. Michael Bennett. Dr. Bennett has done a video to give you an idea of what a knee exam is like.
You can get treatment and pain relief. There are things you can do to help you avoid the need for a total knee replacement. There are conservative, non-surgical treatments for knee pain due to arthritis and Dr. Bennett will discuss them with you if your evaluation reveals that arthritis is the cause of your pain. If conservative treatments fail or if your knee is so damaged that conservative treatments won’t work, then Dr. Bennett might talk with you about knee replacement surgery.
Dr. J. Michael Bennett describes knee arthritis and treatments including knee replacements in this video. He is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and Fellowship Trained Sports Medicine Physician serving patients in Metro Houston from his clinics in Sugar Land and Houston, TX.
Today we’re going to talk about knee arthritis. As we get older and the more active we are, the more likely it is that we will wear down and weaken the cartilage in the knee joint. That cartilage is the lining within the knee that acts as a shock absorber and lubricant between your leg bones at the knee, and it can degenerate over time. If the cartilage deterioration is bad enough, you’ll get to the point where instead of a nice, slick covering of the knee, you’ll have more of a degenerative, bumpy type of surface, leading to exposed bone-to-bone contact within the knee joint. That leads to arthritis when that lining disappears and the bone begins to rub against bone, and the knee joint becomes very painful.
Oftentimes you like to treat this initially with conservative, non-invasive measures such as anti-inflammatory medications, modification of activities, physical therapy and occasionally steroid injections. When steroid injections no longer work, another option would be viscosupplementation, which is a lubricant-type injection that we actually inject into the knees in a series of five shots.
If patients fail conservative medical treatment or minimally invasive measures such as arthroscopy or injections or therapy and their radiographs or x-rays show that they have bone rubbing on bone in the knee joint, or bone spurs and wearing down of cartilage, then they become candidates for a knee resurfacing or knee replacement type of procedure.
There have been many advancements in the area of total knee replacements over the last few years. Now we can actually give you a custom knee, where previously a surgeon had to rely on standard tools that were made for one-size-fits-all type of procedures. Nowadays we can actually take an MRI of your knee, look at your body anatomy and your alignment from your hip, knee to your ankle joint, and send that MRI to a manufacturer where they build custom jigs that allow us to map your knee and place the implant according to your anatomy. We are hoping this will increase the longevity of total knee replacements past the current expected outcome of about 15 years.
If you’re experiencing knee pain, it’s always a good idea to come in for a medical evaluation of your situation before your situation becomes serious. If you’re dealing with knee pain, or swelling of the knee, or your knee is locking, then it’s probably not something that’s just going to go away without treatment. It’s a much better idea to at least get a diagnosis so you can understand what you have going on, and then you can make an informed decision if you want to have something done. Not every knee needs surgery, and ninety percent of the time, our patients don’t need surgery — they can be treated with therapy and non-invasive measures. For the ten percent who do require surgery, it’s always better to have a diagnosis early before it gets to the point that your knee issue is really bad and you need a more invasive procedure. Call us at 281-633-8600 if we can help you.
