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So one of the big questions we get all the time after a knee surgery, whether it's a knee replacement surgery or some other form of knee surgery is questions about elevation
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If I've got a lot of swelling down into the leg, the ankle, sitting in a recliner like this would not be considered effective elevation to reduce the swelling
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even if I'm completely reclined back that's still not an elevated position
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when you look at the clinical research on elevation we need the hip joint to be
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about 30 degrees 45 degrees or even 90 degrees to effectively reduce any of the
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swelling that's happening in the ankle and the lower leg so let me show you how
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to position for elevation laying down in bed we're gonna pretend this is a bed
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we're gonna set up the problem with this kind of wedge pillow especially after a
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knee replacement is that it keeps the knee flexed which might be comfortable
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but it's not ideal for increasing the extension of the knee plus it's still
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too low so what we need to do is we can use a cushion like this as a base but
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then we need to build the height up so that when I do position the leg it's at
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about 90 degrees 45 degrees or at least 30 degrees and what I mean by that is
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let's pretend that it's my left leg that had the knee replacement I set the
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pillows up so that there's no contact under the upper thigh back of the knee
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you can see that the leg is relatively straight but when I laying down in bed or on a couch from my torso to where my hip is this should be a minimum of 30 degrees Ideally it would be even a little bit higher at 45 degrees so in this
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case I would either try to bring this in a little bit closer or try to provide some more
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pillows for height. In an ideal situation it could be as high as 60 or 70 degrees and
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again that's going to allow gravity to pull that fluid down the problem is this is usually not a
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very comfortable position so just maintaining this 30 to 45 degrees of hip flexion while
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laying in bed certainly from here you can do your your ankle pumps and anything else you need to do
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one other thing you can add and you can keep recording just gonna grab this
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If you have the ability with a rolling pin, and it could be a wooden rolling pin, this
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one's metal, it could be marble, whatever you have, you can apply pressure from just
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here's my kneecap, from above the knee up toward the hip just to help, again, some of
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that fluid moving out of the lower leg back into the circulatory system
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So I work the inside, I work the top side, I work the outside
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I do maybe a minute or so of swiping up toward the heart like that to facilitate that fluid
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exchange and then I just relax. I can put this down by my side, I can do two or three episodes of this throughout the day
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This is one of the best ways to truly elevate the leg to reduce the swelling in the lower leg
