Employment

"How long" is not a question anyone can answer...FOR YOU.  Everyone is different and returning to work is a very personal thing.  It depends on many factors including: the amount of healing in the knee, age, occupation, ROM achievement, exercise completion to rebuild your quads, glutes and core, amount of walking and lifting required by your job and more.  There is no right answer.  However...

In general, people usually report returning to work in the 4-6 month range after they've done all the work required and the knee is sufficiently healed.  A guide would be something like: You typically walk 10,000 steps a day at work.  Can you do that a few days in a row without swelling and pain?  Can you bend and lift necessary objects?  Can you climb stairs up and down without holding onto anything when required?  If your checklist is all "yes"'s, then you're probably OK.  If not, think very carefully about going back too soon.

People who have gone back at 3 months typically report pain, swelling, sleepless nights, etc., and then have to wake up and do it all over again the next day.  This does not facilitate the healing of the knee.  Some people have to do this due to financial constraints.  We can only wish them well.  On the other hand, we have had a few...very few...souls who've just skated through this whole thing and were back at work, typically a desk job, in six weeks.  After reading over 4,000 posts, I can tell you that I only need a few digits on one hand to count them.  Recoveries like that are quite rare...I would not rely on being one of them.

In all, you have to get your ROM back (usually by the three month mark after 8-12 weeks of PT @ 2X/week typically plus the home exercises).  Then you have to rebuild all your musculature to support the knee.  Not doing that puts all the pressure on the new joint causing all the pain and swelling that people experience when they return to work before they are strong enough.  STRONG ENOUGH!!!  Critical factor.

As the knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade cautioned: "Choose wisely."

I was 5 months before I went back to work and then that was on a phased return. It wasn't very pleasant for the first couple of weeks, I felt really tired, knee swelling up at the end of the shift. Saying that I'm coming up to 7 months post op now and I'm managing really well. I'm back to full duties, I can skip down the stars now, knee feels so much stronger and hardly any swelling now. I can ride my bike but it still doesn't feel natural I lift my hip up slightly I think it's all in my head. 

Hi Linda,

?I had a partial knee replacement, medial compartment, right knee on 6 Nov 2015. I am a bus driver in the tourist industry so in addition to driving I am involved in walking to a degree (typically up to 3 or 4 miles a day) and handling passengers luggage all as part of my job. I was back at work at 11 weeks.

?In addition to doing all my exercises I visited my sports injury massage therapist and from the day my dressing was removed ( about Day 13 post op) I got her working, deep massage on my knee and on the incision line to potentially overcome the risk of scar tissue forming. She also taught me to 'walk' again ........ heel down first, then ball of foot then toes. Heel, ball, toe.

John

Hi Linda 

like you I'm a care worker ,but I travel around in a car . I had my ltkr in November 2017 and I'm still not back to work , I have recently had a manipulation and that has knocked me back quite a bit but I'm now feeling a lot better and due to start back first week in May on a phased return ,I defenetly didn't think it would take this long ,but I can honestly say it's only now that I'm starting to feel up to returning to work , our job is physical and I'm still not sure that I'm going to be able to do it all but my manager has been really good and I'm going to be shadowing somebody first and obviously  phased to work so that will help ,really hope you have a understanding boss because this whole Tkr has been a rollercoaster ride for me and a lot harder than I ever imagined it would be,but having said that everyone's different , and if I had to ride a bike I still wouldn't be back  at work because all I'm managing to do at the moment is peddling backwards so I would never get to the calls , I have now started swimming which I feel has really helped .any way good luck hope your recovery is quicker than mine .

I'm a service manager and was back to full duty in 8 weeks. I have pain if I walk too long or it get stiff if I sit too long, but I was at a 125 in 4 weeks and was walking stairs in two. The key is the PT consistency. I'm at 13weeks and scheduled for the second one next month.