Total Knee Replacement (TKR)
Mary A is a 75-year-old lady who has had pain in both knees for 20 years with no previous injury or surgery. Both her mother and father had bad knees and her ‘young’ brother recently had a knee and hip replacement.

She is quite frail and she and her family were concerned about major surgery but she was now finding it difficult to walk and get around much at all.

Her X-rays showed quite severe arthritis in both knees.

A year ogo Mary had been given injections of the new synthetic joint fluid ('Synvisc') and these had given her 6 months of good relief. A second course of injections had not helped her nearly as much.

After discussion with Mary and her family it was decided to go ahead with a double knee replacement (both knees at the same operation!). This surgery was carried out at SPORTSMED.SA’s purpose built orthopedic hospital where all patients get individual private rooms with full bathroom facilities. Our specialized nursing and physiotherapy staff have extensive experience in this demanding work and were able to help Mary enormously with her recovery. She stayed in hospital a few days longer than the normal 6 days. She had attended our pre-surgery joint replacement patient education sessions at the hospital before her operation and found it very useful meeting some of the staff who were later to look after her in hospital and having everything explained to her.

After hospital discharge she then entered our knee replacement rehabilitation program with our physiotherapy division at SPORTSMED.SA and has had a lot of help and encouragement from her daughter Helen and husband Bill. She was almost pain free by 6 months but she finds it difficult to remember how much trouble she was in before her surgery although Helen does! She found the surgery and rehabilitation much tougher than she thought and wouldn’t like to do it again but she is also very glad to be able to walk almost painfree again.