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Knee Replacement Rehab in Surprise

Vital Care Rehabilitation specializes in joint replacement rehabilitation

We see patients on a regular basis that have arthritis-related knee pain.  Sometimes physical therapy isn’t enough and patients need surgery. For osteoarthritis of the knee, a total knee replacement (TKR) is the most common procedure.  It’s no simple surgery either but the pain relief can be significant.  In fact, most of the total knee arthroplasty (another name for replacement) patients we see are very satisfied once the recover from the post-surgical pain.  However, the recovery process doesn’t end when the pain resolves.  After replacement surgery, you need a good physical therapist that provides knee replacement rehab in Surprise.

Complete Rehabilitation for Total Knee Replacements

While pain relief is the primary reason patients have a TKR, the rehabilitation process involves much more.  Our physical therapists help you recover your range of motion, strength, help you walk again without an assistive device (front wheel walker), and help you recover your function.  The good news is that there is good scientific research to support seeing a physical therapist after surgery (there’s evidence that seeing a PT before surgery is also beneficial).

The Process Starts with Range of Motion

It’s important to recover your range of motion, or your ability to bend and straighten your knee.  You make not realize it but you bend your knee quite a bit when you sit, walk, or bend down to pick up something.  For these reasons, range of motion is one of the first things our clinicians work on with you.  Exercises that you perform at home and in our clinic, in combination with hands-on techniques will help you recover your range of motion.

Strength Training is Critical

Your quadriceps muscles help straight and control your knee joint.  With the chronic pain of osteoarthritis, these muscles become inhibited and slowly lose their strength.  Working on not only your quadriceps muscles along with your hamstrings, hip muscles, and calf muscles are an important part of the rehabilitation process.  In fact, while most patients experience a significant decrease in knee pain after knee replacement, weakness is a very common complaint.  Strengthening is a critical element of the rehabilitation process.

Functional Exercise Should Be Part of Your Program

Functional exercises are those that support the recovery of daily activities like getting out of a chair, ascending/descending stairs, walking on uneven surfaces, getting in and out of a car, etc.  These are the kinds of exercises that we may educate our patients to perform.  Why?  There’s good evidence to suggest that functional exercise should be part of your rehab program.  Consider this research report:

Results
Six trials were identified, five of which were suitable for inclusion in meta-analyses. There was a small to moderate standardized effect size (0.33, 95% confidence interval 0.07 to 0.58) in favor of functional exercise for function three to four months postoperatively. There were also small to moderate weighted mean differences of 2.9 (0.61 to 5.2) for range of joint motion and 1.66 (−1 to 4.3) for quality of life in favor of functional exercise three to four months postoperatively. Benefits of treatment were no longer evident at one year.

Conclusions
Interventions including physiotherapy functional exercises after discharge result in short term benefit after elective primary total knee arthroplasty. Effect sizes are small to moderate, with no long term benefit.

Reference: https://www.bmj.com/content/335/7624/812.long

In conclusion, knee pain relief starts with a good surgeon and knee replacement.  However, complete recovery should involve a comprehensive physical therapy program…and that’s what we do very well.

If you are looking for trusted knee replacement rehab in Surprise, give us a call.  We can help.

Call us today at (623) 544-0300

Looking For Sciatica Treatment in Surprise?

If you are looking for sciatica treatment in Surprise, Vital Care Rehab can help.

How to obtain Sciatica pain relief  often mystifies new sufferers.

Patients need help understanding that Sciatica is really “irritation of the Sciatic nerve,” and that this nerve “comes from either side of the lower spine and travels through the pelvis and buttocks, passes along the back of each thigh…(then) divides into branches at the knee, that go to the feet.”

Sciatica pain can flare up due to a rear-end-auto collision, from a blow to the lower back or hip, after a fall, from a sudden twisting of the spine, or from a herniated (ruptured) disc. Each sufferer can have a different pain experience when there is undue pressure on the Sciatic nerve. One person may get shooting pain “down the back of one buttock or thigh.” Another may have “mild aches.” Yet others literally jump from “sharp, burning sensations.” And, Sciatica is known to cause “numbness and tingling” in the affected areas.

Therapeutic Exercise Should Be Your First Choice

Advising exercise to patients with osteoarthritis or sciatica may be a highly recommended approach to treatment, but it’s an approach that may not be widely used by physicians, according to a recent factorial experiment (abstract). Researchers found that out of 192 primary care physicians studied, fewer than a third said that they would advise physical activity as part of a course of treatment for patients presenting symptoms of either condition. The results of the study were published online in early October in Arthritis Care & Research.

In the experiment, the physicians watched 2 videos of (actor) patients who presented with pain from undiagnosed sciatica or knee osteoarthritis that had been diagnosed. Afterwards, the physicians were interviewed to find out what recommendations they would make.

Results showed that 30.2% of physicians would give exercise advice to the osteoarthritis patient, and 32.8% would provide this advice to the patient presenting with sciatica.
Reference: https://www.apta.org/PTinMotion/NewsNow/2013/11/7/ExerciseAdvice/

As You Can See, Exercise, Isn’t Prescribed as Often as It Should Be

A physical therapist can guide those with discomfort through the following–or similar–exercises for Sciatica pain relief:

EXERCISES FOR THE LOWER BACK–Appropriate “spine alignment”–along with increasing “flexibility”–can  decrease tension/compression on the Sciatic nerve. The therapists at Vital Care Rehab, will come up with a custom treatment plan based on your specific condition and limitations.

STRETCHING FOR THE PIRIFORMIS MUSCLE–This muscle–located “on top of the Sciatic nerve and within the buttocks”–can become so “tight” it irritates the nerve. Relaxing the Piriformis muscle with specific stretching and hands-on techniques, provided by our physical therapists, can help ease Sciatica pain resulting from Piriformis muscle issues.

STRETCHING THE HAMSTRING MUSCLES–These large muscles–which “run along the back of the thighs.”  Given that the Sciatic nerve closely approximates the hamstrings, it’s common for Sciatica pain to increase the tone (or tightness) of the hamstrings.  Specialized stretching techniques can help ease the tightness of these muscles and decrease Sciatic nerve related pain.

Conservative Care Starts with Vital Care Rehab

Contact us to learn more about Sciatica, and about other exercises and treatments to decrease your pain and promote healing.

 

Looking For A Hip Specialist in Surprise?

Vital Care Rehab is Your Conservative Hip Specialist in Surprise

Other than a surgeon, is there a hip specialist in Surprise that understands how to treat one of the most common causes of hip pain, Trochanteric Pain Syndrome, or Greater Trochanteric Bursitis? If you have recently made a big change in your activity level you may be susceptible to this type of bursitis. It is usually felt as pain on the outside of your hip. This can give you pain when you lay on that hip, walk, or squat.

CyberPT lists some of the more common causes of this condition:

There are many factors which could contribute to trochanteric bursitis. The most common are overuse, acute injury, chronic microtrauma or regional muscle dysfunction. Overuse injuries could result from overtraining or participation in various activities such as running, skating, cycling, climbing, etc., while an acute injury could result from direct trauma to the region of the lateral hip or hip surgery. Chronic microtrauma results from small levels of strain to the lateral hip region as a result of repetitive motions, abnormal gait, altered biomechanics or abnormal posture. Regional muscle dysfunction involving tight or weak muscles could contribute to the development of trochanteric bursitis as well.
Reference – https://www.cyberpt.com/trochantericbursitis.asp

Our clinical specialists know that Greater Trochanteric Bursitis is an irritation of the bursa, a fluid-filled sac. The bursa is next to the Greater Trochanter. This is the bone you feel on the side of your hip. The bursa works to help limit rubbing between the outside of the hip bone and nearby muscles. Bursitis is made worse by:

  • Muscle weakness
  • Tightness
  • Overuse
  • Poor form with activity

Our physical therapist will take time to completely examine your painful hip, lower back, knee, and foot and will ask questions about your daily activities (and exercise level) to help figure out what could be the cause. Your physical therapist will also check the strength and mobility of your hip by watching you walk and perform a variety of tests. In this way, your therapist can assess without the need for X-rays.

We will help you develop a treatment plan that will include:

  • Exercises to strengthen specific muscles
  • Stretches to improve flexibility
  • Hands on manual therapy to decrease pain and help you move
  • Ways you can help control the pain on your own

If you’re suffering with hip pain, call Vital Care Rehab today at (623)544-0300. We have the hip specialist in Surprise that you’re looking for. You don’t have to live with it, we can help.