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Joint replacements have come a long way in the past few decades. What used to be a surgery with a long, painful recovery time has now been streamlined with minimally invasive techniques.
A joint replacement is major surgery. Whether it’s your knee, hip, or shoulder, you’re looking at some serious downtime. However, with minimally invasive surgery techniques, that downtime is shorter and less painful than it was for generations past.
At Advanced Orthopedics & Sports Medicine (AOSM), with locations in Union City and Dyersburg, Tennessee, Dr. Michael Calfee, Paxton Sisson PA-C, and the rest perform joint replacement using minimally invasive surgical procedures to get you back to your normal self as quickly as possible.
Traditional total joint replacement
Total joint replacement has traditionally been done with an open surgery, meaning a large incision is made that requires cutting through or detaching muscles and other soft tissues from the bone and cartilage inside the joint.
For example, a total hip joint replacement done in the traditional surgical fashion will mean your doctor makes one long cut either down the side of your hip or on the back of it, laying everything open to get at the ball and joint hip socket.
Knee replacement is similar, with an incision around 8-10 inches long made over the front of the knee. This means there’s a lot of trauma to your body, which will need a lot of resources and time to heal afterward.
Recovery time can take weeks or even months, and the scarring will be significant. The trauma and the appearance of the scarring associated with joint replacement are two reasons more and more patients are opting for minimally invasive joint replacement procedures.
Advantages of minimally invasive surgical techniques
With minimally invasive techniques, your doctor makes a smaller incision and gently moves muscles and soft tissues out of the way instead of slicing through them.
For the knee, this means the incision size goes down to around 4-6 inches long. For the hip, the incision is moved from the back or side to the front of the hip, and the incision could be as small as only 3-4 inches long.
In addition to the smaller incision, which will leave a smaller, less noticeable scar, you’ll also enjoy these advantages when you choose minimally invasive surgery:
- Less swelling and bruising (thanks to less trauma)
- Lower amounts of fluid retention around the joint
- Faster healing
- Less pain
- Smoother rehabilitation
Think you might need a joint replacement and want to talk to the experts about the possibility of minimally invasive joint replacement surgery? Just call the AOSM location closest to you, or book an appointment online.