Dr. Tom Muzzonigro, a physician who specializes in hips and knees at Butler Memorial Hospital, examines a knee X-ray Thursday at the hospital. Muzzonigro says rehabilitation after knee surgery begins not long after leaving the operating room.

Healthy knees shouldn’t be taken for granted, and Dr. Tom Muzzonigro, a physician who specializes in hips and knees at Butler Memorial Hospital, knows that well.

However, for those who suffer from knee ailments, knee surgery now has a much quicker recovery time than before, and a lot of that is because of minimally invasive techniques and a special kind of anesthesia.

“We use multimodal anesthesia, which is a fancy way for saying we block your nerves,” Muzzonigro said.

“We try to trick your body into either not knowing we did the surgery or just being less aware. And what we find or have found is that if you never really feel that kind of level of bad pain, then you kind of rehab faster, whereas in the old days, when you woke up with 10 out of 10 pain, that sets off a chain reaction in your brain and spinal cord and the nerves in your body.

“That is very hard to calm down.”

Rehabilitation can begin not long after leaving the operating room.

“We get total knees and total hips and ACL reconstructions up the day of surgery, so there’s no more days in bed,” he said. “You can bring regular clothes in — you don’t need to be in a hospital gown. You take a shower, sponge bath, you put regular clothes on, you eat upright in a chair. So it begins the day of surgery.”

Knee ailments affect people from a wide range of ages and backgrounds, not just older people.

Younger patients who are athletes often have overuse injuries or tendinitis, which can easily be treated with RICE — rest, ice, compression and elevation.

More serious injuries include sprains and strains, or ACL or PCL tears. Treatments for those injuries can include bracing the knee for surgery.

For those who are middle aged, meniscus tears are common.

“The meniscus is a really cool shock absorber in your knee, but it usually doesn’t heal itself well,” he said.

Those cartilage tears are often caused by slipping on ice or a wet floor, anything that involves squatting or twisting a knee the wrong way.

Unlike other knee injuries, the knee often locks up with a meniscus tear.

In other people, arthritis, worn out cartilage and spurs can happen in their knees.

“We treat all of them conservatively, which is natural,” he said.

Something that’s preventive more than anything else is maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

“Try to head toward a healthy weight with a combination of routine exercise, a healthy diet and smoke cessation,” Muzzonigro said.

“Those are tricks that everyone can do before they have to see someone like me.”