Total Joint Care Center
 How Joints Work
Joints connect the bones in your body while enabling your skeleton to rotate and swivel. The ends of the bones are connected by thick bands of tissue called ligaments. Cartilage, a smooth plastic-like tissue, coats the ends of bones and lines joint sockets to prevent the bones from rubbing against each other. A delicate membrane called the synovium produces a lubricant to reduce friction and wear in the joint.
...And Why Joints Don't Work
Age, stress, and disease can make joints stiffen in much the same way as wear and a lack of lubrication can cause stiffness and squeaking in mechanical hinges. Arthritis, the most common cause of joint pain, afflicts about 43 million Americans. In patients with arthritis, the joint's cartilage lining wears away, allowing the bones to rub against each other, resulting in friction, swelling, pain, stiffness, and instability. Joint pain can also be caused by deformity or by direct injury to the joint, as in the case of trauma or a sports injury.
Conservative Treatment First
Dr. Bernhard will expose all conservative treatment options before considering surgery, including anti-inflammatory drugs, physical therapy, and joint fluid injections (or "joint grease"). He may also be able to relieve joint pain with new minimally invasive surgical procedures like joint realignment, ligament reconstruction, and arthroscopy, which require only tiny incisions and a few stitches.
Total Joint Replacement – A New lease on Joint Life
Very severe joint pain and stiffness may require total joint replacement (TJR). When performed by a skilled surgeon such as Dr. Bernhard, TJR is one of the safest and most successful types of surgery. Nearly half a million hip and knee replacements are performed every year in the United States. In 96% of cases, surgery is complication-free and results in significant pain relief and restoration of mobility.
In TJR, arthritic or damaged parts of a joint are removed and replaced with a artificial joint called a prosthesis. Dr. Bernhard has performed hundreds of total joint replacements, including complex revision surgeries, using the most advanced surgical techniques and prosthetic materials.
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