Compression and Elevation To Manage Swelling After A Total Knee or Hip Replacement #TKR

The icing is fine. The icing is not going to change the swelling

The icing is purely for sensation and how it feels. If you're not really experiencing a lot of pain, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Use it if you want

This swelling is just because this leg has been in a dependent position for a while

you know and so you get that kind of pitting edema in there and the coloration looks good

the temperature looks good like there's no real concern yeah I had a home care nurse

and they weren't concerned yeah but Dr. True, Barbara and I and Mike a little bit he said

I think you are alright but be safe on the ultrasound. Yeah always get it ruled out

So we are at 47cm right on the dot. Right now what I want to do, now I don't have the normal wraps here I've got them at the

other clinic. But I would definitely encourage some compression wraps with the 6 inch wide ace wraps that

are real kind of soft and comfortable. You probably don have any at home but that okay because I got two at the other clinic But what I going to do right now is I going to use these wraps they not the right wraps but they what we have so 47 47 try and

remember that so when because I I like this topic when I

I researched the clinical data on elevation specifically for swelling. So this is a little tighter than you're going to wrap it at home, but we're not going to

do it as long. So I'm going to have this on for like 10 minutes or so

But when you look at the clinical research on elevation, you have to be flat on your back

Your hip has to be at about 45 degrees. hip at 45 degrees or higher below that you're really not going to get any

benefit so like a wedge laying on your back with a wedge and the knee bent

you're not going to get any benefit really from that it's good to do it's

better than nothing but at the same time it's just not going to give you the

dramatic change that we looking for So when I wrap when you wrap in the future you looking for about a 50 coverage So you see those three lines right So I come around about halfway and it just a spiral and ideally you going to bring it all the way up at least above the knee maybe even higher than that

You're going to cover about 50% overlap. Every single layer. Just spiral

You don't have to go tighter. You go the same compression all the way up

But it just naturally will funnel that fluid up. And so, like right now, this would not be considered, obviously, elevating the leg

Because the leg is below the heart. But the compression and the gradient of that compression is going to help

So if somebody had to be in this position, this would work. I'm going to get you to use the recliner

We're going to recline. But before you do, just hang on one sec. So, we've got a bunch of moving parts here

So I'm going to get the leg rest out. And you can lay back for me

Go ahead and push that recliner back. A little bit more. Go all the way as long as you feel comfortable

Let's see if we can get you. Yeah. Okay and then what we gonna do is we gonna bring this up right there It didn hurt or anything It sounded like it wasn going to

So to put it in perspective, this still is not 45 degrees, right? So this still

would not give you a noticeable benefit, but because we have the compression on

there and it's day one and we're just kind of getting the ball rolling, getting

you started this is a good place to start how does that compression feel at

this level you know I mean I don't know so that clock on the walls at 7530 I'd

like to get 10 minutes in I know it kind of feels like a little bit of a waste of

time you know because you want to get moving and we'll do all that stuff but

I'd like to see if we can get some of this fluid moving back into the system

just because I mean it is I'm going to try and sneak this in a little higher it

is a little bit more than I would like to see you can just relax see if you just

totally relax even if the toe rolls out that's fine I'll kind of adjust

does that feel like and and just positioning and everything okay it might

get a little throbby you might feel a little bit of a heartbeat you know in

in the toes. It's nowhere near too tight that I'd be concerned for 10 minutes, but when

we take it off we should see some improvement. So you just relax