An enhanced recovery programme for knee arthroplasty was introduced two years ago to our orthopaedic department. It involved the setting up of an educational programme for patients along with an extensive rehabilitation programme. The main aim of the programme is to provide an efficient and personalised service that results in an improved patient experience and fewer bed days following surgery.

We carried out a retrospective study, randomly selecting 100 patients over a period of a year who were enrolled in the enhanced recovery programme. We analysed three main areas involving the pre-, peri- and post-operative period. We looked for any key factors that led to an increase or decrease in bed days. The re-admissions were analysed and the cost benefit was calculated.

99 patients were randomly selected and satisfied the inclusion criteria. We found that with the enhanced recovery programme the average length of stay for a knee arthroplasty was four days. There were no re-admissions within the population.

We would like to share our enhanced recovery programme model as we feel it is a robust and effective way of providing a high level of care and decreasing the length of stay post-operatively.