Is knee pain preventing you from enjoying the simple things you used to do, such as gardening, playing golf, riding a bike, or taking long walks?

We can help

At the Joint Replacement Center, our orthopedic surgeons can return you to the days of moving without joint pain. New advancements in surgical procedures permit us to make minimally invasive incisions for joint replacement, allowing the patient a faster recovery period with less discomfort.

Joint replacement surgery is a treatment option for when a patient’s own joint has degraded to the point where bones are rubbing together and causing degradation of the bone, stiffness, and pain. Joints most often replaced are knees, hips, or, less commonly, the shoulder. During the surgery, bones that have been worn down are resurfaced with metal and plastic implants, including the cartilage. Recent advances in medical technology have made joint replacement surgery a good choice for patients, with less recovery time and better outcomes.

Joint Replacement Center

The Joint Replacement Center is a cooperative program of St. Philomena's Hospital, Quest Orthopedics, and Vincennes Orthopaedic. Our goal is to enable patients to return to normal daily activities as quickly as possible following joint replacement surgery.

This patient-focused program offers preferred centralized scheduling, a dedicated joint replacement unit and staff, involvement of family and coaches, group exercise, and physical therapy.

Signs and Symptoms

The signs and symptoms of arthritis include joints that are warm to the touch, swollen, painful, and immobile. Arthritis can affect the legs by causing bow-legged or knock-kneed deformities that result from the destroyed cartilage. Arthritis of the hip can cause a person to limp or favor the affected leg. But the most intolerable symptom is pain, and pain is the symptom that all physician attempt to reduce or eliminate.

Hip Replacement

Arthritis is the leading cause of disability in the United States, affecting one in six Americans. If you suffer from chronic pain due to arthritis or trauma-related conditions, a hip replacement may be right for you. Minimally invasive total hip replacement is a surgical procedure that removes worn surfaces of the hip and replaces them with a special prosthesis.

The hip, a ball-and-socket joint, is the largest weight-bearing joint in the body. The ball lies at the top of the thigh bone that fits into a rounded socket in the pelvis. A thick rubber ball-like material called ligament and capsule holds the ball in the socket and provides stability in the joint along with the musculature of the hip. The bony ends are covered with a smooth surface called cartilage. Cartilage provides cushion to the bones and permits them to move smoothly. This cartilage can wear away. This can be secondary to normal wear and tear or disease or injury. This can cause pain and swelling and subsequent muscle weakness causing reduced function.

Knee Replacement

The knee is made up of three bones - the lower end of the thigh bone (femur), the upper end of the shin bone (tibia) and the knee cap (patella). The joint surfaces where these three bones touch are covered with a special smooth material called cartilage. Cartilage allows the knee to move smoothly when it is healthy, but can wear away with time or disease. This can cause pain, swelling, deformity, and decreasing function. Total knee replacement eliminates all pain that is coming from the arthritic knee and significantly improves function.

During a knee replacement, the end of the leg bones are replaced with metal. There's plastic that goes at the back of the knee cap and between the two metal components. These components are secured into place with a cement specifically designed for bones. The surgery is intended to alleviate pain from arthritis, improve joint stability and restore normal knee alignment.

Partial Replacement

The human knee joint can behave as though it is one joint or three separate joints. Each part of the joint is called a compartment. There is one compartment on the inside of the knee (medial), another on the outside (lateral) and the third compartment is the kneecap (patella). There is normally a preponderance of medial compartment arthritis of the knee, with an accompanying bowing deformity, with variable involvement of the other compartments. If the other compartments are not as arthritic, a partial replacement can be considered.

Other types of osteoarthritis are more limited in the joint and are not associated with the problems described above. The uninvolved parts of the knee are often entirely normal. One treatment option, in this circumstance, is a partial knee replacement. It is only suitable for osteoarthritis, and can resurface the inside, outside, or the kneecap part of the knee, leaving the other parts untouched. A partial knee replacement can restore the alignment of the leg, and retension the ligaments if the deformity is small and flexible.