knee replacement guidelines

[madlovejen]

sorry you have misunderstood what i am asking

I am looking at the effectiveness of our referral from orthopaedics to our outpatient department. I am looking for anyone who have written guidelines on what to include in this referral for TKR/ who have an effective referral they are willing to share with me so that I can develop our current practice.

Many Thanks

[jwilso]

At the hospital that i work in we aim to discharge pts post TKR within 5 days. To make this a safe discharge patients should have 90 degrees of knee flexion and be able to SLR. they are usually on 1 or 2 sticks and would also practice stairs/steps if required.

i do a post-op knee clinic to review them 2 weeks postop. again we check ROM,SLR and gait. providing that they are still 0-90, can SLR and our managing their home exs then we do not arrange any more physio. if they are not acheiving these goals then i either give them another week and review them again or arrange out-pt physio.

in effect this means that i have to do a knee clinic every week but i give the pts 15 minute appointments and so with a typical clinic of about 4 pts this only takes 1 hour. this reduces the number of referrals to out-pts.

the patients that are discharged from the knee clinic then see their Orthopaedic consultant at 6 weeks post-op.

Hope this sort of info is what you are after.

Cheers,

john