Building from the success of our Same Day Hip Replacement program, Humber River Hospital has launched a Same-Day KNEE Replacement Program (SKiP). Now, patients do not need to stay overnight in hospital after a knee replacement. Given the current environment, this is welcome news for patients who need knee replacement surgery, but want to keep their hospital stay as short as possible.
What Makes Same Day Knee Replacement Possible at Humber River Hospital?
Our entire surgical team and the patient is involved to accelerate the initial phases of recovery after knee replacement:
- Our anesthesiologists are using a short-acting spinal anesthetic, which makes patients comfortable during the surgery, but wears off fast enough to allow patients to walk the same day.
- The surgeon injects a mixture of local anesthetic into the patient’s knee during surgery.
- Patients receive a special combination of medications to decrease nausea after surgery.
- Our physiotherapists are now staying at work later in the day in order to get patients up walking after surgery.
- The anesthesiologist administer a special nerve block just prior to the knee replacement. The patient then takes home a bottle with local anesthetic, which will deliver pain medication directly to the knee for 3 days after surgery.
- The anesthesiologist gives the patient a call in the days after surgery to see if they’re having any trouble with the local anesthetic bottle.
- The patient is instructed how to remove the catheter from the thigh on the third day after surgery. (It’s pretty simple: Pull out the filament, apply pressure with gauze for 2 minutes then apply a simple band-aid.)
- A handout for patient information can be found here. Please note, different surgeons will provide slightly different medication prescriptions for patients to take at home.
