The first two weeks after a knee replacement

A new knee is a good operation. The range of movement you end up with, though, is largely decided in the first two weeks, before most people have seen a physiotherapist outside the hospital. That is why we start the week you come home, not the month after.

Day one to three

The job is swelling and straightening. Ice for twenty minutes every couple of hours, leg up above the heart when you sit, and the knee pressed flat into the bed with the heel on a rolled towel for five minutes several times a day. Bending will come. A knee that will not straighten is much harder to fix later than one that will not yet bend.

Day four to seven

Walking indoors with the frame or sticks the hospital gave you, and heel slides to start the bend. We measure the angle at every visit and write it on your plan so you can see it move. Pain that eases as you move is fine. Pain that is worse every day, or a calf that is hot and tender, is not, and you should ring us or the ward the same day.

Week two

By now most people are off the frame indoors and bending past ninety degrees. This is where the plan on your phone starts to matter: sit-to-stand from a firm chair, step-ups on the bottom stair, and the straightening work continuing every day. The exercise we would keep if you only did one is the straight-leg raise, because a quad that fires early is a knee that stops feeling like it belongs to someone else.

Tom sees most of the clinic’s joint replacements and sends a short progress note to your surgeon after each stage if you would like him to. Bring your discharge letter to the first session and we will build the first six weeks around it.