Chronic Knee Pain After Surgery

15 Jan Chronic Knee Pain After Surgery

What causes chronic knee pain?

Traumas and surgeries often cause nerve damage. This nerve damage translates into a chronic pain, which means a pain that lasts past the normal amount of time that it should take to recover. Nerve damage can either happen directly during the time of trauma or surgery, or can be a result of complications during the healing process. Nerves can get caught within the scar tissues as your body heals after trauma or surgery, causing nerve damage and pain.

How do you treat chronic knee pain?

Nerve pain can come about either immediately after surgery or after an elongated amount of time. One of the common areas that patients experience this type of pain after trauma or surgery is in the knee. When dealing with knees specifically, there are a few different types of procedures that are performed. These include Total Knee Replacement (TKA), Operative Fracture and Dislocation Treatment, Simple Immobilization and Knee Arthroscopy. Despite these procedures, 3-5% of patients will still have chronic knee pain past the normal time of recovery.

Usually, when elongated pain is involved after these surgeries, medical pain management becomes involved. Medical pain management only focuses on symptoms instead of treating the root cause of the pain, and therefore isn’t as effective. However, the most effective way to fix the problem is by surgery on the involved nerve to remove neuroma. This means that nerve will either be removed proximally or at the nerve stump.

What symptoms suggest that you should see a professional for chronic knee pain after surgery or trauma?

If any of these symptoms persist, please visit a professional such as Dr. Ducic:

• The problems persist after six months of medical pain management, physical therapy, supportive care, and necessary adjustments.
• You have been prescribed certain medical care that is not showing signs of improvement.
• Problems persist past the normal amount of recovery time and all other possible contributors have been ruled out (post operative infection, bleeding, etc.)

If you are experiencing any of these complications make sure to address them with a professional in a timely manner. If you fail to do this, the chronic knee pain can evolve into something much worse. It becomes a more complex problem involving your central and autonomic nervous system. If you are trying to become less dependent on pain medications and improve your quality of life, then it is important to treat your chronic knee pain with peripheral nerve surgery and removal. Contact Dr. Ducic today to learn more about what you can do for your chronic knee pain.