TOTAL KNEE REPLACEMENT

Total Knee Replacement

[Writer's institute]

Total Knee Replacement

Differences in gait in pre & post TKR patients versus healthy

It is important to note that the patients with Knee Osteoarthritis (OA) face may problem in maintaining their body balance. It has been noted that the bodies of these patients have the tendency to sway because of the imbalances in their joints. It is the Knee OA that is responsible for creating these imbalances. Because of the Knee OA, the patients may suffer from knee pain and proprioceptive deficits. There are studies that suggest that the knee pain is responsible for the postural instability. It can be established that there is a difference between the postural stability of a healthy patient and the one that has Knee OA (Mandeville et al, 2007, p. 1).

If a person is experiencing knee pain, he surely is going to witness a postural sway. The patient not only feels problem in gait but it is also evident that he moves slowly because of the lower quadriceps strength. There is a chance that patients with lower quadriceps strength may fall because of the postural sway. The possibility for such thing to happen cannot be overruled because it is reported that these patients are prone to risk of falling 60% more than the healthy ones. It is because of the postural instability that these patients may experience a kind of gait instability.

Total Knee Replacement (TKR) is a surgery that is performed on patients that are suffering from an end-stage knee OA. The surgery is performed to correct the deformity that the patients may possess. Although, the TKR helps the patient in relieving his pain, it does not guarantee a postural and gait stability. It is the extent to which a person is involved in daily activities that need to be considered here. If the activities of daily living (ADLs) are performed intensively, there is a possibility that the patients falls more often during the performance of such activities (Chisholm, 2010). Not only the degenerative OA but it is the knee pain that would adversely affect the postural stability of the patients. It can be said that the gait instability can be seen even after a TKR surgery is performed on a patient (Mandeville et al, 2007, p. 2).

Differences in strength in pre & post TKR patients versus healthy

The patient that suffers from degenerative OA would start to feel a slight discomfort in mobility but it develops into something that is chronic and hard to treat. After the TKR, the arthritic joints are resurfaced, which gives the patient some kind of relief because the pain reduces to a bearable extent. It is important to note that the strength increases after the TKR because of the greater quadriceps strength. However, the aged patients might not get the same results as do the young ones. Because of the improvement in quadriceps strength, the patient is able to move at a pace that is not achieved by the ones that are suffering from Knee ...