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For the first 10 days, following your joint replacement, you’ll have an occlusive dressing, a very sticky bandage, on either your hip or your knee following your joint replacement surgery. We’re going to ask you to keep that intact if at all possible following your surgery. You can shower. Let the water run right over that dressing itself, but please don’t submerge it under any water. This is very important because we don’t want any water getting inside the surgical site. The dressing was placed sterilely in the operating room, and we want to maintain that sterility throughout that 10 day period without access to the outside world. If throughout this 10 day period, there seems to be that some water did get underneath the bandage, you want to make sure you notify your provider immediately. If water has gotten in or underneath the dressing itself, we may ask you to remove that dressing entirely and either leave it off or replace it with a gauze and Tegaderm. In addition to the concern of water getting underneath the bandage, we also may ask you to look for any signs of drainage coming from your wound. Certainly if it’s coming out of the dressing itself, you need to notify your doctor right away. During those first 10 days, there are several other things we want to make sure you’re looking out for such as a blood clot. Typically would manifest itself as swelling throughout the entirety of your leg and associated with tenderness when you grab or squeeze your calf muscle.
