What are some drugs used in a knee surgery?

Question

Im getting my ACL and meniscus repaired in about a month and am worried about the drug aspect.

Im deathly afraid of getting knocked out, or being put on drugs that make me loopy, make me forget things, or let me feel the pain but dont care about it. I just dont like drugs, they freak me out,im in my 20's and this will be the first surgery ive ever had.

Also, I dont really know my tolerance to pain since ive never had a severe injury.And I have never been on any Rx drugs or any other drugs, I dont smoke and very rarely drink.

any ideas what drugs they use (and side effects)? or what i should do? should i tell my doctor my fear?

Answer 1

had my acl done a while back.

very painful. you will welcome the morphine and/ or codeine for the first day or two (or even a bit longer). No big deal, you'll just sleep a fair bit at first. I'm not into drugs either, but I'm also not "Rambo tough". After that, extra strength tylenol "might" be sufficient....good luck

Answer 2

Most of the drugs you get will be related to the anesthesia.

If you don't want to be knocked out, you don't have to be.  ACL repairs can be done under spinal or epidural anesthesia - you'll actually have less pain and feel much better if you go that route.  If you want sedation to go along with it, you can have it, but you don't need to have it if you don't want it.

I'm not going to go into the drugs used for general anesthesia and their side effects, because that's just too much typing!  The short version is that if you are otherwise healthy, your risk of anesthesia complications is extremely low.

If you have a surgeon with any personality, s/he might even give you a play-by-play of the surgery if you're awake.  I've had patients watch knee surgery (arthroscopy) on the monitors and get a tour of the knee during the procedure.  

They use a tourniquet during ACL repairs to keep the field blood-free, and after a while you might feel very restless in that leg.  That would be the only drawback that I can think of to having regional anesthesia.

Definitely discuss this with your surgeon.

After surgery, you'll get pain medication, and maybe an antibiotic.  Ask your surgeon - they all do things a little bit differently.

Good luck with the procedure!

Answer 3

One of the risks during knee surgery is a deep vein thrombosis therefore one of the drugs you'll receive will be to prevent this from happening,its most likely to be enoxaparin or a low molecular weight heparin type drug. They are in a group of drugs called anticoagulants and are widely used and safe.

You'll also receive pain killers for after the surgery, again most likely a morphine derived pain killer initially and then onto something less strong like paracetamol or another type of anti-inflammatory or analgesic.

The morphine derived one will probably be under your control so you'll be able to modify how much you need.

I think that the best thing to do would be to have a really good chat with your surgeon prior to the op, and also to the anestatist (the person who'll actually administer the drugs during the surgery) who'll give you an insight into whats happening.

Good luck!