Lived Experiences of Amputees

Understanding the time frame of recovery from lower limb amputation is essential to the design and implementation of any postoperative management strategy. Although today's health care system has placed an emphasis on speed, the consensus committee participants agreed that placing an emphasis on shortening the time of healing and recovery following limb loss is not necessarily the wisest path.

Regardless of the ethology, the postoperative recovery period after the amputation of a lower extremity typically is 12 to 18 months and simply cannot be rushed. This 'recovery period' includes activity recovery, reintegration, prosthetic management, and training. Some members of the expert panel of the consensus committee felt that setting fast-paced and often unrealistic goals can lead to a sense of failure in an individual who is actually progressing normally.

The postoperative year-long continuum does not separate easily into "stages". However, an attempt to define the stages of recovery has been made to facilitate discussion of how the goals evolve throughout the rehabilitative process.

The preoperative stage typically starts with the very difficult decision of whether to amputate. This stage also includes an assessment of the vascular status and decisions on attempts to improve circulation. The difficult process of level selection, preoperative education, emotional support, physical therapy and conditioning, nutritional support, and pain management also all occur in this stage of care. The acute hospital postoperative stage is the time in the hospital after the amputation surgery. This hospital time typically ranges from 5 to 14 days.

In general, this stage begins with hospital discharge and extends 4, 6, or even 8 weeks after surgery. This is the time of recovery from surgery, a time of wound healing, and a time of early rehabilitation. Frequently, end points of this stage are characterized as the point of wound healing and the point of being ready for prosthetic...