Types of Anesthesia

If your joint pain is still impacting your daily life despite medicines, physical therapy and even changes to your lifestyle, then surgery might be your next option.

If you decide surgery is right for you, we give you several different choices to help you decide how to manage your pain before, during, and after the operation.

Multimodal Pain Management

Minimizing your pain as well as your need for opiates or narcotics after your joint replacement surgery will significantly enhance your outcome and prevent side effects like nausea, vomiting, constipation and delayed healing.

One technique we use to reduce your need for certain drugs is called multimodal pain management, and it uses a combination of tools and practices like:

• Anti-inflammatories
• Acetaminophen or Tylenol
• Icing the affected limb
• Elevating the affected limb
• Injections at the time of surgery
• Minimally invasive surgical techniques

General Anesthesia

Modern general anesthesia uses IV medication to put you to sleep for surgery. IV medication makes it easy for the anesthesiologist to wake you up and helps you be alert more quickly.

Spinal Anesthesia

Spinal anesthesia with sedation is often used to not put you to “sleep” but to decrease the stress your body feels during surgery and make it easier for the anesthesiologist to manage your vital signs.

You will also have better pain control in the recovery room and will typically “wake up” with less pain. Plus, the effects of spinal anesthesia tend to only last for a couple of hours after surgery.