Changing approach to Total Joint Replacements

It really started when I heard that a couple of buddies from high school were discussing their total knee replacements.  David "Tree" Birkholz was a standout basketball player at my high school and Hank Evans and I played football together there.

I've not really seen much of either of them since so it seems like they should still be in their 20's.   I just can't think of them as 57 and 56 and having a surgery that most people think is only for senior citizens.   Goodness, they're both younger than me!

I had my first knee surgery in 1972 and met my first physical therapist, Ray Patterson, when I was sent for rehab.   As I have done numerous times since then, Dr. Patterson asked me what my major was.

At that time, as a college sophomore, it was Wildlife Biology.  I thought that meant you got to hunt and fish all the time (two activities which are surprisingly absent from my adult life considering that I had a gun, rod, or bow in my hand from age 6 to 22).  But I had discovered that jobs were few and far between in that field so I was looking around for a new career.

As odd as it sounds, I was trying to decide whether to be a football coach or a doctor.   Ray Patterson, in his wisdom, replied "great...you're going to be a physical therapist.  It's the perfect marriage of both of those."

Lo and behold, he was right.  That knee injury has given me a career that I have loved and which certainly seems to have been a good fit for the gifts I was given. 

Since then, Dr. Ken Bell of Maryville Orthopedic Clinic has operated on both of my knees and has kept me quite active but due to no small amount of abuse, I don't have the healthiest knee joints around.  It really isn't a question of "if" I will have to have my knees replaced.  It's "when."

Total Rehabilitation employee, Alcoa High Head Athletic Trainer, and unofficial daughter Peggy Bratt had her right knee replaced at age 41.   She went from struggling to run on the field to take care of one of her athletes to half-court basketball and an essentially pain-free knee.  

So I talked to Dr. Bell and here's what he told me.   He said they're replacing knees and hips in people that are younger and younger.   That they're getting better long term results than any of us dreamed possible.  (Dr. Bell, who has a total hip replacement, is an aggressive mountain biker--I know--I often chase him down a rocky hill that he rides easily and I white-knuckle all the way down.)  

He attributes most of those advances to the improvement in materials that they are using.  He said that the materials being used now are more than ten times more durable than materials used as recently as 10 years ago.   And the prediction on those older models was that they would last 20+ years.  10 times better than they used to be and the older models would last at least 20...hmmm...you can do the math on that one.

Folks that avoided joint replacement surgery in fear of having to have it again in 20 years really don't have much to fear.  We don't know exactly how long these things will last but it isn't likely that you will wear it out any time soon.

So instead of putting off getting joint replacement surgery as long as you can, maybe you should consider it if your joint pain is affecting your lifestyle. In other words, if you can't do the things that you want to do, joint replacement surgery might just let you get back to the things you love.

I'm not scheduling knee surgery any time soon but it's good to know that when the time comes, the prospects are good.