When should I consider surgery?

First, have a discussion with your doctor.  The decision to have surgery is typically made based on the answers to the following questions: 

• How much is the arthritis interfering with your lifestyle?
• How much pain is it causing?
• What are your other medical conditions?

Our recommendations:

• Try each of the nonsurgical treatments before considering joint replacement surgery.
• There is generally never any hurry to do a knee replacement.
• Waiting to have the surgery will not necessarily make recovery more difficult -- recovery is much faster than it used to be.