Knee Replacement Surgery: How Do You Determine When A Woman With Arthritis Needs This Procedure?

Dr. Tsao:

When patients come to see me complaining of knee pain and I need to evaluate them for a knee replacement surgery I will do a history and physical examination and then I will get usually an x-ray. That x-ray will let me see the patient’s knee, both knees, and how they stand and how they are positioned. There are several views we get – AP, which is a front view; lateral, side view; skyline, which is a kneecap view, and most importantly we also will generally get a standing flex view and that’s what the patient putting all the weight of their body on the knee. That allows me generally to see how much space they have in their joint, how much arthritis is there and often times it will give me an idea of what type of arthritis they have.

If I think they have something besides osteoarthritis I may also go to a next level of testing – blood work, to check for something like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, any of the inflammatory arthritis, and the other thing I might also check for is blood work, such as the white count or an ESR or CRP - all that’s blood work to check for inflammation levels and inflammation levels become critical if you have any history of infection in the knee.

About Dr. Audrey K. Tsao, M.D.:
Audrey Tsao received her engineering degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. She attended medical school at Cornell University and completed her orthopaedic residency at Northwestern University in Chicago. She returned to Johns Hopkins University to complete a fellowship in Arthritis and Adult reconstruction surgery.

Click Here For More Information On Orthopedic Services At Banner Health

Average Select ratingPoorFairAverageGoodExcellent

 

Rate This

More on This

• What To Expect When You Undergo Regenokine® Therapy
• The Future Of Non-Surgical For Rheumatoid Arthritis And Other ...
• Treating Knee Pain Without Surgery
• Regenokine® Therapy, A Non-surgical Treatment For Osteoarthritis

Around the Web

Tags

• Arthritis

Add a CommentComments

There are no comments yet. Be the first one and get the conversation started!