First the hips, then the knees, and now the ankles

People who have lived with hip pain or knee pain may be candidates for hip or knee replacements. But, only over the past few years or so have people been able to trade in their aching, badly functioning ankles for prosthetic ones.

Ankle replacements were tried as early as the 1970s, but the ankle is unique in its form and function. While it can be said that the knee and hip bear our weight, the ankle also takes one heck of a pounding with a smaller joint. Treatment for severely arthritic ankles or ones that have been damaged through trauma is often fusion – fusing the bones together. While for most people, this does help with the pain, it also leaves them with a stiff foot that can’t bend at the ankle at all.

According to an article in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, there is a lot of promise in ankle replacements and the surgery keeps the patients in the hospital for only 3 to 5 days if there aren’t any complications. However, because the procedure is so new, there are no long-term studies that can tell how long the replacements will last or what types of complications may occur down the road.

You can read more about this in the article Doctors hope for new era of artificial ankles.

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Photo: iStock.com

Tags: chronic pain blog, pain blog, ankle pain, hip replacements, knee replacements, ankle replacements, artificial ankles