Recent Pain Management Advances Speed Knee Replacement Healing

SAN DIEGO, Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Recent extraordinary improvements in pain management following total knee replacement (TKR) surgery help patients recover faster and more comfortably, according to a panel of orthopaedic surgeons who discussed the latest strategies and approaches for post-operative pain management and rehabilitation.

The goals of postoperative pain management in the 300,000 annual TKRs are to enable the patient to do the required physical therapy, and to minimize pain and stress. Four renowned orthopaedic surgeons addressed the critical importance of balancing effective pain relief with the fewest possible side effects at the 74th American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons' Annual Meeting.

"In the last two years, improvements in our ability to reduce pain after total knee replacement have been dramatic," said Dr. Daniel J. Berry, orthopaedic surgeon and professor and chairman of Orthopedics at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "With new methods, patients have much less pain, and they also have many fewer side effects of the pain management, such as nausea and grogginess." Dr. Berry added. "These improvements allow patients to get moving faster, get out of the hospital sooner, and recover more quickly and comfortably," he said.

Pain immediately after TKR surgery can be quite intense, but new methods can reduce the pain dramatically, with fewer side effects than in the past. Local nerve block and meds can offer pain relief in a specific part of the body for a day or two. Multiple medications used together provide significant improvements in pain suppression. When several are marshaled to attack post-operative pain, no dose of a single drug is large enough to cause side-effects. A combination can preemptively attack pain to allow the patient to concentrate on reclaiming mobility. Clinicians prefer to limit patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) and narcotics because they can leave a patient bed-bound -- slowing recovery and increasing side-effects.

Daniel J. Berry, MD, served as moderator at a media briefing on Pain Management and Rehabilitation for Total Knee Replacement, with Mark Pagnano, MD, Steven MacDonald, MD, and Paul Lachiewicz, MD.

For more information on pain management and rehabilitation: http://www3.aaos.org/search/search.asp?client=my_collection&site=my_collection &output=xml&ie=&lr=&q=pain+management+and+rehabilitation+for+total+knee+replac ement&btnG=Search

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