Under the best medical conditions, patients that just underwent knee replacement surgery can expect to walk again after a few days, but now, injecting liposomal bupivacaine into knee tissues around the site of surgery enables patients to start walking within hours.
216 patients that underwent knee replacement surgeries were examined and tracked for pain control after their normal procedure and treatment – they were tracked for improvements within the first two days following their surgeries. Half of the patients were offered conventional pain control medications with continuous femoral nerve blockade – the patients complained of weakness in their legs but the treatment allowed them to deal with pains for two days after surgery.
The remaining half of the patients were administered with liposomal bupivacaine injection – delivered directly to the site of their surgery – and contrary to what obtained in the traditional pain control method, the injected liposomal bupivacaine strengthened patients and enabled to start walking again just hours after their surgery.
According to Dr. Jason Davis, a joint replacement surgeon at the Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, injecting knee replacement patients with liposomal bupivacaine “optimizes pain control early on.” And the reason for this is not far-fetched, “Function-wise, it was a lot easier for patients to move around more confidently. In the past decade, we’ve made major advancements in pain control for knee replacement surgery. This option is a promising, viable one for our patients.”
This research finding was presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons that held from November 5-8 in Dallas, Texas.