Surgery advancements allow for partial joint removal, improved recovery

Allowing a patient’s healthy bone, cartilage and ligaments to remain intact, a partial knee replacement provides patients with a more natural-feeling knee than a total knee replacement.

“Patients who undergo a partial, or unicompartmental, knee replacement experience quicker recoveries and less pain than those who undergo a total knee replacement,” explains Dr. Mark J. Tenholder, knee surgeon at Orthopaedic Associates. “Patients also have the ability to bend their knee shortly after the surgery.”

For 66-year-old Santa Rosa Beach resident Joe Barocco, pain related to knee arthritis had begun to affect his daily life.

“I had been playing golf at least three times a week, bowling and walking regularly,” Barocco says. “But my knee pain was really slowing me down.”

Barocco’s X-rays showed that only parts of his knee had been damaged by arthritis, so Dr. Tenholder recommended a partial knee replacement to repair the damaged areas, leaving Barocco’s healthy bone and cartilage in place.

“This procedure provided Joe with a smooth return to his active lifestyle,” Dr. Tenholder says. “He returned to the golf course just six weeks out of surgery and hasn’t experienced any of the pain he had grown accustomed to.”

To learn more about partial knee replacement or to schedule an appointment with Orthopaedic Associates, call (850) 863-2153.

Since 1988, the specialty-trained doctors at Orthopaedic Associates have remained the orthopaedic experts in the Gulf Coast area. Through three state-of-the-art facilities, located in Fort Walton Beach, Niceville and Destin, the doctors and staff of Orthopaedic Associates provide dedicated, compassionate orthopaedic care in the following specialties: ankle, elbow, foot, hand, hip, joint replacement and revision, knee, neurology, shoulder, spine, sports medicine and wrist. For more information regarding Orthopaedic Associates, visit www.orthoassociates.net, or “like” Orthopaedic Associates on Facebook.