Knee Joint Replacement: Know Its Types And Benefits

12 March, 2010 No Comment

If your knee is causing severe pain very frequently and keeping you away from the day-to-day activity, then you can consider artificial knee replacement after consulting the doctor.Who needs knee joint replacement?
When your osteoarthritis is very painful due to the break down of cartilage and related bones
When any degeneration of knee takes place due to rheumatoid arthritis
When due to post-traumatic arthritis, ligament damage or joint cartilage injury is occurred
When due to Avascular necrosis, blood flow to the bone end inside the joint falls down and as a result articular cartilage gets torn
Apart from those reasons, any kind of ligament or cartilage damage, and also knee fracture due to sudden fall can get benefit from knee joint replacement.

Why knee joint replacement is required?
To stop the pain of knee caused due to the bone friction, artificial knee replacement is necessary. After implanting artificial knee, bone friction doesn’t take place and knee finds more place to move freely.

Types of knee joint replacement
Artificial knee’s mechanical stability decides the design of different kind of artificial knee joint. Considering this fact, knee joint replacements are of four types:

Constrained knee joint replacement: While knee is damaged in a poor way then this kind of knee replacement is done. Components of two knee joints are hinged with each other. This kind of knee joint replacement gives more stability and lingers for more time. This is done when patient’s age is more and patient’s knee condition is very bad.

Semi-constrained knee joint replacement: After when the ligament is removed completely, then one kind of inbuilt support is implanted to hold the knee.

Non-constrained knee joint replacement: In this kind of knee joint replacement, certain artificial substances are implanted inside but they are not connected to each other like the constrained one. In this case, patient’s ligament and muscle both support the entire thing. This is the most common type of artificial knee joint.

Unicondylar knee joint replacement: In this particular kind of knee joint replacement, only one half of the knee is replaced. It is done when knee is partially damaged. But doctor prefers to replace the entire knee to avoid further complications.

These are the different kinds of knee joint replacement. Depending upon the reason for knee replacement and patient’s condition, doctors decide the type of artificial knee.

Thus, if your knee is causing pain for any of the above reasons then it is better to get your knee replaced and get a active life.