Dr. Armin Tehrany, Orthopedic surgeon of Mount Sinai Hospital, talks about how patients can ease their surgery and recovery from surgery by proper preparation going into surgery.

Doctor Tehrany: Studies have shown that patients who watch a video do better after the surgery. What I tell my patients who've decided they're going to have surgery is, number one physical therapy is extremely important. I prefer if they actually got to know a physical therapist that I trust before the surgery; that way the patient can ask questions that they might have forgotten to ask me. They can talk about what kind of commitment they need to physical therapy. Because you're not going to physical therapy once, you're going for surgery once, but you go for physical therapy two to three times a week. Studies have shown that patients who watch a video of a total knee replacement before their knee replacement do better after the surgery versus those patients who don't watch a video of a total knee replacement before the surgery. So I think it's great to be able to get as much information as you can about what exactly you're going to have done before you go in. It decreases stress which is helpful at the time of surgery. I let them know that I'd like for a family member or close friend to join them for surgery because I want to be able to talk to that family member in the recovery room or afterwards and let them know how everything went. I also want to be able to answer their family member's questions because the patient may not remember what I tell them after surgery because of anesthesia. And we let them know that if there are any questions that they might have between the time of when we speak and before surgery that they should not hesitate to call us. It's very important for the patients to have no fear. There's always going to be some, but the better we can decrease that fear the better they're going to do and the more comfortable they're going to be.