How prepared are you for rehab at home?
This Primer runs through the practical things you need to take care of before your knee surgery
Page updated August 2023 by Dr Sheila Strover (Clinical Editor)
-
Anaesthetic options that may affect your immediate mobility after surgery
- Things to buy or hire before the big day
- Are you well prepared to manage Walking Aids?
- Do you know why it matters to get fit before knee surgery?
- What are the main early concerns on arriving home after surgery?
- What do you know about preventing thrombosis?
The tendency these days is for the hospital to send you home as quickly as possible, for both financial reasons and to minimise the potential for a hospital-acquired infection. Make a telephone appointment to ask your surgeon how many days you will be in hospital, supported by the staff there and on what day post-op you can expect to be sent home.
If you are going to be sent home within the first 24 hours, then the issue of whether or not any local anaesthetic block will still be working. Such a block will provide good pain relief for the first night, but then if you are sent home and the block wears off you may be plunged into acute pain without the support you had in hospital. Even if having a general anaesthetic and being put to sleep for the procedure, it often happens that the anaesthetist adds what is called a regional block while you are asleep, and possibly a long-acting local infiltration into the wound as well, so you may wake up comfortable but unaware that this is because of the local anaesthesia.