'Natural treatment should be opted over knee replacement'

Hyderabad: Joint replacement surgery should be delayed as much as possible and one must use all other forms of treatment to prolong the life of natural knee, sports medicine expert Dr Anant Joshi said today.

"Joint replacement surgery is for older people and not for young people. Very often youngsters come to us and say my joint is hurting...Should I get a knee replacement done. Knee replacement is ideally done only when people are aged 65 years and above," Joshi, who is also a BCCI consultant, told reporters here.

He was participating in the 8th SISA Live Surgery 2015 Advanced Knee Course organised by Sai Institute of Sports Injury and Arthroscopy here.

The expert said if one goes for knee replacement at an early age, then one may end up having severe problems as the joint has be changed every 10-15 years and it is a difficult process.

"Therefore joint replacement surgery should be delayed as much as possible. And one must use all other forms of treatment which can prolong the life of your natural knee," he said.

Joshi said knee replacement surgery should be only when there are no other options available.

Stressing on the need for doing sensible exercise, he said, "wrong kind of exercises can damage knees. Ideally, people should do low impact exercise."

"Instead of doing any high impact exercises, like Zumba dancing, kick boxing which lot of young people want to do, it is better do activities which place less strain on joints so that you can prolong life of your joints," he said.