80% of people told they need a Total Knee Replacement may not need one, according to an Oxford study. Many only require a partial knee replacement. Learn how a partial knee replacement functions & how this intervention can preserve the healthy parts of your knee.

News flash: Surgery doesn’t always work. The most important thing I tell my patients is that any effort to make a person better might make them worse.

This year, in the US alone, the number of total knee replacements will exceed 600,000. Eighty percent of these are unnecessary. Here is why.

Total knee replacement has been a godsend for many people with severe bone-on-bone arthritis. Many of my patients are skiing, hiking, and playing sports on replaced knees at levels they have not done in years, or even decades.

It is a heady time in the world of human empowerment. We are seeing technologies that can alter our genetic code, augment our brainpower, enhance our physique, and extend our lives.

Artificial knee replacement surgery used to mean the reduction of sports activities like golf, swimming, and cycling. Yet with severe arthritis affecting younger and younger people, we are currently pushing the envelope of sports participation with joint replacements and learning as we go.

The debate is always the same. “We do it the traditional way because that is the way we have always done it.” “It is safer for patients; the new ways are not time tested. And, there are more complications.”

Though knee cap problems are common, current solutions have serious limitations.

Injuries to the kneecap—also called the patella or patella femoral joint— heal poorly, if at all. Here is why.

Total and partial joint replacement has finally moved out of the hospital! This has been made possible by enhanced computerized surgical planning, the use of human-guided robotic arms, and novel ways of preventing pain.

A CT scan of your knee is used to build a computer model, which robotically guides the surgeon to precisely replace the joint, resulting in better alignment and reducing the risk of early wear. However, getting your insurance company to cover this cost is not easy.

Knees do not necessarily wear out evenly, sometimes one part of the knee is perfectly fine while another part is completely destroyed. If only part of the knee joint is worn out, why replace all of it?

How often do you stop to think about the miraculous self-healing machine that is your body?