At the age of 72, actor Christopher Biggins says he has never done so much exercise as he has over the past five months — and he isn’t entirely joking.
He is walking for at least half an hour a day, going to aqua-aerobics once a week and does an hour of daily physio exercises.
Yet earlier this year his knees — his left in particular — had become so stiff and painful that he needed the help of sticks to get about and was ‘wincing’ in pain.
‘I also had to rely on an electric tilting chair to propel me upwards — I struggled to get out of other chairs, which was quite frustrating,’ says Christopher, who lives in East London with civil partner Neil Sinclair, 58, a former air steward.
Earlier this year his knees — his left in particular — had become so stiff and painful that he needed the help of sticks to get about and was ‘wincing’ in pain
The problem was osteoarthritis — so-called wear-and-tear arthritis — which affects around eight million people in the UK. It occurs when the cushioning cartilage that wraps round the end of bones wears away, leading the bones to rub together where they meet in the joint.
What has proved so transformative for Christopher was a knee replacement operation, which involved cutting out his diseased left knee joint and replacing it with a plastic and metal one.
But just as crucial as the surgeon’s skill has been the rehabilitation exercises he has stuck at since.
Christopher, who had his knee replacement on the NHS in May, opted to pay to spend a month at a private rehabilitation centre after the surgery.
‘Everyone told me that post-op exercise is vital to build up the muscle to support the new knee,’ he says. ‘But I knew I would need the discipline of someone telling me to do the work, as I’m not a natural exerciser.’
The problem was osteoarthritis — so-called wear-and-tear arthritis — which affects around eight million people in the UK. It occurs when the cushioning cartilage that wraps round the end of bones wears away, leading the bones to rub together where they meet in the joint
Having been on the waiting list for the operation since the end of 2019 (it wasn’t just Covid delays, he also needed heart surgery to repair a diseased valve last October), he also felt it would be ‘a shame to wait this long for a new knee for it not to work’.
‘In hospital I was essentially just left in the bed,’ he says. ‘But at the rehabilitation centre, the Lynden Hill Clinic near Reading, I had an hour of physiotherapy a day; they were getting me to try stairs within days of arriving and they iced the knee four or five times a day to get the post-operative swelling down.
‘It sounds intense, but it worked. I’m now going up and down the stairs like greased lightning!’
He’s also had hydrotherapy — exercises performed in water.
‘My NHS consultant referred me for that,’ says Christopher. ‘It took a while to get the appointment, but it’s a good way to get the knee moving without putting too much pressure on it.’
The sum total is that whereas, back in February, he was struggling to get up the stairs of his two-storey home, Christopher is now fit enough to put in an energetic turn as Dame Trot in the pantomime Jack And The Beanstalk at the Orchard Theatre in Dartford, Kent, in December.
Yet not everyone finds their joint replacement is such a success. Pre-pandemic, around 108,000 people a year in the UK underwent knee replacement surgery.
It is normal to have pain and discomfort for about six months after knee surgery. But some research, such as a paper in the journal EFORT Open Reviews in 2018, found 20 per cent still suffer pain for longer — and other research has found 10 per cent of the 102,000 patients a year who have a hip replacement do, too.
While there can be various reasons for this, experts say one common factor is that some patients fail to grasp that the rehab process (repetitive physiotherapy exercises and a gradual increase in movement), although lengthy and gruelling, is vital for the surgery to succeed.
‘Total hip and knee
