What should I do before knee replacement surgery
Pre-Hab Plan for Knee Replacement Surgery #1: Equipment and PT
Are you anxiously awaiting knee replacement surgery, wondering what you should be doing before your operation? If so, we’re here to help you learn everything you should know about pre-hab for your knee replacement surgery. It’s completely understandable to be unsure of what to do right now, the countdown to your knee replacement surgery can be a scary thing, but you don’t have to figure it out on your own.
Two of the best things you can do to prepare for your surgery are following a pre-hab PT plan and picking up any equipment you can use for your recovery. We're here to help with real patient experience from The Knee Zone founder and certified coach, Diana Braun. Plus, real surgeon recommendations from a board-certified surgeon with nearly 30 years of experience replacing knees, Dr. Raj Sinha. Their best-selling book, Knee Replacement Secrets, has already helped thousands facing knee replacement. Their experience and recommendations can help you too.
What are pre-hab exercises and why are they important?
Simply put, pre-hab exercises (or prerehabilitation exercises) are physical therapy exercises done prior to surgery in order to better prepare your knee. As Dr. Sinha explains, the basic idea behind pre-hab ahead of your surgery “is that if you're stronger going into the operation, you'll be stronger coming out of it.” If your arthritis has progressed to the point where you avoid using your knee as much as possible because of your pain level, you also avoid using the muscles around your knee. When those muscles are unused for prolonged periods of time, they lose their muscle tone, size, and overall strength. During your recovery, having well-developed muscles around your knee will be crucial for everyday activity. So, as much as you can, it’s important to prepare for surgery with a physical therapist’s recommended exercise plan.
Furthermore, knee replacement surgery itself traumatizes the muscles surrounding your knee, which makes them even weaker than they are before the surgery. Part of PT for your recovering knee is not only improving the mobility of your knee joint, but overcoming all the things that cause your muscles to weaken. So, to prepare yourself for the best possible recovery, preparing your muscles with a pre-hab plan going into surgery is extremely important. With your muscles prepared, you'll start from a higher standpoint of muscle function, and you won't see as much decrease in muscle function in the early recovery phase. It will allow you to recover faster if you can rehabilitate your quadriceps muscles and become stronger going into the operation, so don’t skip out!
What about equipment? What do you need during recovery?
As for equipment, there are a number of helpful tools to pick up for your recovery. There are two main categories for equipment: things you absolutely should have and things that aren’t strictly necessary, but may be worth picking up if you are able to do so ahead of time.
Diana and Dr. Sinha recommend a few different essentials for your recovery. First and foremost, you’ll absolutely need ice packs for your recovering knee. Flexible gel ice packs are especially helpful since they can easily and comfortably wrap around your knee. To that end, you should have a few on hand so that at least one is always in the freezer, ready to use once your current one needs to be replaced.
Next, there are a few pieces of equipment to help you navigate everyday activities during your recovery. A walker is important to grab, since your recovering knee will need to be properly supported if you plan to get up at all during the early days of your recovery (your hospital may provide one to you directly).
Since everybody needs to use the bathroom, even those recovering from surgery, there are some bathroom essentials for your recovery to consider. A toilet riser will be extremely helpful in making bathroom visits easier, being more convenient to sit on and stand from. On the same note, a plastic shower chair with non-slip feet and no wheels so you can sit in the shower is a must-have. Also, depending on whether or not your bandage is waterproof, it may be a good idea to pick up a shower sleeve for your leg during those early days of recovery. Lastly, for bathroom companions during recovery, you should consider grabbing a bedside commode if you anticipate being unable to get to and from the bathroom from your regular resting spot confidently.
Lastly, you’ll want a way to alert people to help you when you need help in the first few days. Whether it’s your phone to text and/or call or a bell to ring when you need help, have something nearby at all times to grab your people’s attention when you need it.
What else might be nice to have during recovery?
Beyond those absolute must-haves, given that your ability to get around will be hugely hampered, some kind of grabber or a similar tool to help you grab anything out of reach will certainly. A grabber can help you pick up things that are just out of reach, which will probably be most things in the early days after your surgery.
Now, as for tools and equipment you can use for PT, there are plenty of specialty pieces of equipment that can be extremely helpful. For Diana’s recovery, the single most valuable piece of PT equipment was her stationary bike. Peddling everyday helped speed up the healing process for her bilateral knee replacement, and it can certainly help you too. Even a foot peddler or simply pedaling your legs in the air can achieve the same effect.
Lastly, it's worth mentioning a few specialty items that you may come across through research or when talking to your surgeon. A TENS unit uses electric stimulation on your recovering muscles and is helpful for quad activation, muscle relaxation, and pain management. A knee pad like The Kneely Pad to assist you with kneeling is great for developing mobility in your knee during recovery. A Game Ready® Ice Machine for compression and cold therapy that circulates around your recovering knee is a high-tech alternative to the ice packs mentioned earlier. And a Continuous Passive Motion (CPM) machine to reduce joint stiffness and increase range of motion is certainly not a bad idea.
Will I be able to recover without fancy equipment?
Yes, absolutely yes. There are tons of useful tools for PT that you may already have lying around your home. And if you don’t have one of them already, they’re extremely low cost compared to tools like the stationary bike. For instance, a rope, bungee cord, or exercise strap are excellent choices for mobility exercises for your knee, which will be a huge part of your recovery. Even without specific tools themselves, you can do a bunch of exercises with just a countertop. During Diana’s recovery, doing push-out leg extensions with a flexible strap helped her significantly.
If you’re at the point in your recovery where you’re doing that level of PT every day, you're going to get the progress you need without shelling out for fancy equipment. There are all kinds of high-tech tools to help ease your recovery, but you won’t absolutely need any one of them to have a successful recovery.
