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Has The Time Come For Your Arthritis To Need Surgery

Surgery is a pretty serious business, and just the thought of it can be quite scary for some people, especially as they get older. Then again, arthritis is a pretty serious business too, and the most serious cases of arthritis can be helped by joint replacement surgery . . . thousands of people find relief from hip replacements, knee replacements, even ankle replacements these days. So how do you know when the time has come when surgery is the best chance of relief from problems with arthritis.

You should speak to your orthopaedic surgeon or rheumatologist about the possibility of surgery if;

• the pain is stopping you from sleeping at night
• medication no longer helps to relieve the pain . . . even though you’ve tried them . . . all of them . . .
• your arthritis pain is having an increasingly negative affect on your life . . . . stopping you from doing everyday activities like shopping or visiting friends
• the arthritis is restricting your mobility so much that you have trouble going upstairs, standing up from a chair or even getting up from the toilet

Your doctor won’t just take your word for it of course, there are other things which will be taken into consideration too, before advising that joint replacement surgery is the correct course of action to deal with your arthritis.

Things Which Can Affect Your Chances of Surgery for Arthritis (and other problems)

• General health – the state of your general health needs to be considered before you can undertake any type of surgery. Your doctor will need to check to see if you have hypertension, lung disease, heart disease . . . all of these additional problems can only add to the risk of surgery causing infection. Your risk of infection from the surgery will be higher if you have diabetes mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis and some skin diseases like psoriasis, or if you are taking immunosuppression drugs.
• Weight – if you are overweight there is also a chance that surgery for your arthritis will pose more potential dangers. People who are overweight not only take longer to recover from their surgery but also put extended pressure on their new joints meaning that they don’t last nearly so long. Unfortunately, the mobility problems which arthritis causes can often result in people piling on the pounds, but after a concerted effort to lose the extra weight, followed by a successful surgical procedure they are left much happier and likely to keep the weight off.
• Age – surgery on older arthritis sufferers does pose more potential problems than surgical procedures on younger patients, however, surgery isn’t always the answer for extremely young patients either. New replacement joints will wear out much faster on younger, more potentially active patients, so they are advised to try out all other avenues for relief before resorting to surgery for their arthritis.
• Bone density – osteoporosis or other problems which cause loss of bone density, or a history which includes stress factors may also influence your doctors situation on whether surgery is the right treatment for your arthritis. At the very least these problems will need to be treated before you can go into surgery for arthritis.
• Nutrition – it is important that you are as healthy and strong in other ways before you can undergo surgery. This may not be a problem for younger patients, but older patients who may not eat a balanced diet with sufficient minerals and vitamins could be prescribed a course by a dietitian before surgery, just to make sure that they are as healthy as possible before surgery takes place and to enable a speedy recovery.

Joint replacement surgery might just be the best option for your relief from years of pain from arthritis, just as long as everything else falls nicely into place!

Any of these stories sound familiar? Maybe it’s time for you to consider joint replacement surgery.