Part of Total knee replacement rehab
How long do you use a walker after a knee replacement: frame, crutches, cane or stick
Warning signs, and when to get help
How long do you use a walker after a knee replacement?
Until you can walk safely without it, which is a question about how you walk and not about which week it is.
One timeframe in this area has a source behind it, and it is the NHS. Its account of recovering from a knee replacement describes using crutches or walking sticks at first, going down to one crutch and then a walking stick when you feel confident, and then trying to walk without an aid after about 6 weeks if you feel ready. Look at what each step hangs on. The first change hangs on feeling confident and the last on feeling ready, so the only date in the whole sequence is attached to a condition.
One instruction outranks everything else here, including the sequence above. If your surgical team gave you a limit on how much weight goes through the operated leg, that limit decides what aid you use and when it changes, and nothing on this page or any other page overrides it. Most people having a straightforward first knee replacement are not given a limit. The implant is fixed to the bone during the operation and is built to take your weight from the start, which is why you are helped up to walk so soon afterward, and why NICE NG157 asks for rehabilitation including walking to begin on the day of surgery if possible and no more than 24 hours after it. A smaller number of people are given a limit, usually where the operation was more than a standard replacement, where a fracture or a tendon was also repaired, or where the surgeon wants bone to grow into the implant before it takes a full load.
You may not recognize your own limit as a limit, because it usually arrives as a phrase rather than a sentence. The usual ones are non weight bearing, touch or toe weight bearing, partial weight bearing, a figure in kilograms and pounds, a share of your body weight, and "weight bearing as tolerated", which means there is no limit.
If you were given any of the others, two things follow. You cannot keep to it on a single stick, because taking your weight on one hand through a stick is not far off taking it all through the leg, so the crutches or the frame are what make the limit possible to follow at all. And the readiness checks below are not for you yet, since every one of them involves putting your full weight through the operated leg. Ask your team what your limit is and when it changes if you are not certain, and take the answer from them rather than from a page.
Nothing there says you should be off the aid by six weeks. The week counts you will find on other sites, the ones that give you a set number of weeks on a frame and then a set number on a cane, are individual hospital or surgeon protocols rather than anything the NHS or the NICE joint replacement guideline states, and they differ from one service to the next. NICE NG157 makes recommendations on rehabilitation after a knee replacement and sets no timetable for walking aids at all. This page does not repeat those week counts, and that is on purpose: a number is the part of a sentence people keep after the source of it has been forgotten, and the person who half remembers one is usually the person deciding whether to push on or to worry.
A word about words, because the same equipment has different names depending on where you are reading this. The wheeled or four-legged frame you push or lift is a walker in the United States and Canada and a frame in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, where everyday speech still calls it a Zimmer frame after a manufacturer's name. The single stick is a cane in North America and a stick elsewhere. Crutches are crutches everywhere. If your team named one of these, use their word and their equipment.
What is the usual order: frame, crutches, one crutch, stick, nothing?
The direction is downward in stages, and each stage is about how much support you are taking.
The NHS sequence is crutches or sticks first, then one crutch, then a stick, then nothing if and when you feel ready. Some people start on a frame or a walker instead of crutches, which the NHS also names for the first days, usually because it suits their balance, their arms or their home better, and that is a different starting point rather than a worse one. Our set-up pages cover each of them: sit to stand with a walker and step to walking with a walker for the frame, walking with a cane for the single stick, and walking with hand support for practice along a counter when you are between stages.
Which hand the stick goes in and how high the handle should be are set out on the walking with a cane page and in the main program's set-up notes, so they are not repeated here. Getting either of them wrong makes a stick feel useless, which is a common reason people abandon one too early.
Indoors comes before outdoors, which is the opposite of how people imagine it, so the aid is often dropped at home weeks before it is dropped in the street. Stairs keep their support longest, and safety is as much the reason as comfort: OrthoInfo names stairs as a particular hazard until the knee is strong and mobile, and advises using a cane, crutches, a walker or a handrail, or having someone help you, until your balance, flexibility and strength have improved. The foot order on stairs is on total knee replacement rehab.
Check the equipment itself as well, because each of the next three quietly makes an aid work less well than the person leaning on it believes. The height, set from your wrist rather than guessed, which the pages linked above cover and which is worth rechecking on anything that came out of a cupboard or from a relative. Whether it is the right aid for you, since crutches ask a lot of hands, wrists and shoulders, a frame will not go up stairs, and either can be swapped if it is a fight. And the state of it, because a worn rubber tip slides and a borrowed frame is set to somebody else's height.
An aid is not in itself a guarantee against falling: an estimated 47,312 fall injuries a year in American adults aged 65 and over, treated in emergency departments, involved a walking frame or a stick, 87 percent of them a frame, and about a third of those people were admitted to hospital (Stevens and colleagues, 2009). That study counted falls rather than aid users, so it cannot tell you how risky an aid is, and it is not a reason to put yours down. It is a reason to have it fitted to you and checked rather than inherited.
How do you know you are ready to stop using it?
What follows is what a physiotherapist watches for. It is practice experience and not a published test, and it comes after your own team's instruction rather than instead of it. If you still have a weight-bearing limit, stop here and go back to it: each of these checks puts your full weight through the operated leg, so none of them applies until your team lifts the limit.
- You walk without a limp over a reasonable distance, not just for the first few steps while you are concentrating.
- Pain and swelling are no worse the next morning after a walk than they were before it. The following day is the judge, not how it felt at the time.
- You can turn, stop and change direction without having to plan it or grab something.
- You are steady on a slope and on uneven ground, not just on a flat indoor floor.
- You can carry something in one hand, which is what takes the aid out of service in real life anyway.
- You can get up from a chair without pulling on the furniture.
Read that as all six rather than a choice of six. One of them being a no is the answer, however good the rest look, and a good morning is not one of the six. Take it down one stage at a time as well, since the NHS sequence goes from crutches or a frame to one crutch, then a stick, then nothing, and nothing in it goes straight from a frame to no aid. Say what you can and cannot do on that list to your physio or surgical team and get their answer before you change anything, because they can watch you walk and this page cannot.
Test it the way you would test anything that might go wrong. Indoors first, in good light, with a counter or a wall within reach, over a short distance, and not on a day out. Keep the aid in the house rather than putting it away, because going back to it for a bad day or a long trip is sensible rather than a step backward.
The exercises that build this directly are the side to side weight shift, which teaches the leg to accept your weight, and single leg stance, the balance underneath every step you take. Walking with longer steps and stride length walking with markers are for when the steps on the operated side are still short.
Why is keeping it longer the safer mistake?
Because the two mistakes do not cost the same. Keeping a stick for three weeks longer than strictly necessary costs you some inconvenience and some pride. Putting it down three weeks early costs you a fall onto a new knee, and OrthoInfo warns that a fall in the first few weeks after surgery can damage the new knee and may lead to further surgery.
South Tees physiotherapists put the preference in one sentence: they would rather you used a mobility aid for longer and walked better. They also note that when people are ready to give it up, what settles it is usually confidence rather than physical ability, which cuts both ways. Some people hang on to a stick they no longer need, and some let go of one they do.
None of that makes an aid something to hold on to indefinitely without ever asking about it. An operated leg that never takes its full share of your weight gets less of the loading that rebuilds thigh strength, and a hand permanently on an aid keeps a lopsided walking pattern in place as a habit rather than as a weakness, which is why the aim is to come off it when you can do that safely rather than when you happen to stop thinking about it. OrthoInfo puts the decision in the right hands: your surgeon and your physiotherapist will help you decide which aids you need and when they can safely be stopped. The NHS says you will have a follow-up appointment about 6 weeks after the operation, and that is the place to put the question, rather than settling it alone on a good morning.
The situation to watch for is the good day indoors followed by an afternoon out. A flat, dry, familiar floor flatters everyone. The combination that catches people is weather, a crowd, a curb and a long walk back to the car, and it is an afternoon like that rather than a quiet morning at home that should decide whether the aid stays in your hand.
If you are older, have fallen in the past year, or feel unsteady, hold on to the aid longer and treat the question as a falls question rather than a knee question. Balance and falls prevention is the program for that, and starting it before you drop the aid beats starting it after.
Why is one person still using a stick when another is not?
Almost everything that decides this is invisible from outside, which is what makes comparison so useless here.
Which operation you had and what your surgeon found. What your knee and your leg were like before it, since a leg that has been weak for years starts further back. Whether you had a complication. How much other walking practice you are getting, and what sort of ground you walk on.
What your balance was like beforehand, and whether you have fallen before. What else you live with: another knee, a hip, a back, a heart or lung condition, poor eyesight, or medicines that make you lightheaded. And whether anyone is at home with you, which changes how much risk is reasonable.
Two people on the same ward on the same day can be weeks apart on this for reasons that say nothing about either of them. The person to compare yourself with is you a fortnight ago.
The question to ask at your check-up is a specific one: do you want me on this stick, outdoors as well as indoors, and what do you want to see before I put it down. That is a question your team can answer in a minute. The exercises for weeks 2 to 6 and the exercises for weeks 6 to 12 cover the strength work that actually gets you off the aid, and what to pack and prepare at home covers getting hold of the equipment in the first place.
How long until you walk normally, without a limp?
Longer than the aid question, and the two are not the same milestone. Being safe without a stick and walking the way you used to are separated by weeks or months for most people.
The NHS puts full recovery at several months or longer, varying with your age and general health, and the whole arc with each source attached to it is on the recovery timeline week by week. This page stops at the aid.
A limp that persists after the aid has gone is usually strength and habit rather than a sign of damage. Walking on the flat returns before stairs do, and the thigh needs to be strong enough to control the knee rather than just strong enough to hold you up, which is what the later strength exercises are for. If the limp is not improving at all from month to month, or your knee feels as if it gives way, that needs raising rather than training through, and it is in the warning signs below.
When to call your physio or surgical team
Any fall or knock changes the picture, including a small one. If you cannot put weight on the leg, the knee or thigh is very painful, or the leg looks out of shape, that is an emergency department rather than a phone call, and you should not drive yourself. If a smaller knock leaves the knee newly painful, swollen or bruised even though you can still walk, go back to your crutches or sticks, keep your full weight off that leg, and have it checked the same day, because a break in the bone around a new knee is not always obvious at first.
If you are on tablets or injections to lower your risk of a blood clot, a fall has a second half to it. Bang your head while you are taking one of those medicines and you need urgent advice even if you feel fine, and unusual bleeding or bruising needs advice the same day. That line is in the warning signs below with what to do, and it ends with the instruction that matters most: do not stop the medicine on your own.
Contact your physio or team within a few days if your knee feels unstable or gives way when you stand or walk, if its movement has stopped improving week to week, if putting your weight through the leg has become newly or increasingly painful, or if your limp is getting worse rather than fading. Pick the aid back up and keep using it until that has been looked at, and stay off stairs on your own in the meantime. Going back to it is not a setback, and there is no cost to being wrong about it.
Get advice the same day for a foot that drags, catches or slaps down when you walk, for new numbness in the lower leg or foot, for a calf that becomes newly swollen, warm or tender, for a leg that is swelling further from day to day instead of settling, and for a knee or wound that is getting hotter, redder or more painful. The full set is in the warning signs below, with the urgency each one needs.
Related exercise programs
Warning signs
Get emergency help now
- Emergency: since your operation, you suddenly become short of breath, you get chest pain or pain in your upper back that may be worse when you breathe in, you cough up blood, your heart is beating very fast, or you faint. Call emergency services straight away, even if your leg looks normal. These can be signs of a blood clot in the lungs (pulmonary embolism).
- Emergency: after a fall or a knock, you cannot put weight on the leg, your knee or thigh is very painful, or the leg looks out of shape or shorter than the other. Go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. If you cannot get up, call emergency services. A broken bone around a knee replacement is rare, but it needs treatment in hospital. If a smaller fall or knock leaves the knee newly painful, swollen or bruised, even if you can still walk on it and the leg looks normal, stop the exercises, go back to your crutches or sticks and keep your full weight off that leg, and get it checked by your surgical team the same day. A break in the bone around a new knee is not always obvious at first, and walking normally on one can move the broken ends apart.
Get help today
- Same day: a calf or thigh that is newly swollen or getting more swollen, warm, tender, red or darker than usual, has swollen veins that are sore to touch, or has a throbbing or cramping pain that does not fit your injury or condition, or that feels different from normal muscle soreness after exercise. This can be a sign of a blood clot (deep vein thrombosis), especially after surgery, an injury, time in a cast or boot, a long trip or a spell of being much less mobile than usual. Get medical advice the same day. If you are also short of breath or have chest pain, call emergency services.
- Same day: swelling in the operated leg that is increasing from day to day instead of settling, including swelling spreading into your calf, ankle or foot, pain in your leg or calf away from the wound, increasing pain in your calf, or tenderness or redness above or below your knee. Get medical advice the same day. Swelling is expected after this operation, and it can be moderate to severe in the first days or weeks, but OrthoInfo asks you to tell your doctor about new or severe swelling because it can be the warning sign of a blood clot, and increasing swelling of the calf, ankle and foot, increasing calf pain, and tenderness or redness above or below the knee are all on its list of clot signs. Your clot risk does not end on the day your tablets or injections do. If you are also short of breath or have chest pain, call emergency services.
- Same day: you are taking tablets or having injections to lower your risk of a blood clot and you notice blood in your urine, black or bloody stools, bleeding gums, a nosebleed that goes on and on, bruising far beyond what the knock would explain, or you are being sick or coughing up blood. Get medical advice the same day, and do not stop the medicine on your own. Bleeding more easily is the known trade-off of these medicines (NHS), and the dose or the type may need looking at. Go to an emergency department if the bleeding will not stop, you feel faint, or you bang your head while you are taking it, even if you feel fine, because the NHS advises getting urgent advice after a head injury on medicine that thins your blood and only a hospital can scan for a bleed inside the head.
- Same day: your wound becomes more red, hot, swollen or painful, starts to leak or ooze, is still leaking in the second week or has never stopped, has pus coming out of it or its edges start to come apart, or you have a high temperature or feel hot, cold or shivery. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. Redness can be harder to see on brown or black skin. If you feel very unwell, go to an emergency department. If you have a very high or very low temperature, shivering you cannot control, you are breathing very fast or finding it hard to breathe, you are confused or your speech is slurred, your skin, lips or tongue look blue, gray, pale or blotchy (on brown or black skin this can be easier to see on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet), or you have a rash that does not fade when you press it, call emergency services, as this can be sepsis.
- Same day: in the days or weeks after your operation you are getting more and more tired, breathless doing everyday things such as walking to the toilet or getting dressed, dizzy or lightheaded, your heart is racing, or your skin looks paler than usual. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. Tiredness and breathlessness that build up like this are not part of the usual recovery. Blood loss during and after a knee replacement can leave you short of red blood cells (anemia), which is treatable, and a slow bleed or an infection can show up the same way. If breathlessness comes on suddenly, or you get chest pain, call emergency services, as the emergency line above explains.
- Same day: since your operation, the redness, warmth, swelling or pain in your knee is not getting better or is getting worse, for example the knee pain keeps building both when you move and when you rest. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day, as this can be a sign of infection around the new joint. If you feel very unwell, go to an emergency department.
- Same day: you suddenly cannot straighten your knee or lift your leg straight when you could before, often after a pop, a tearing feeling or a stumble, or you notice a dip just above or below your kneecap, or you suddenly cannot put weight on the leg, even without a fall. Keep your weight off it and contact your surgical team the same day. If you cannot reach them that day, go to an emergency department. A tendon at the front of the knee may have torn, and a repair works better when it is done soon.
- Same day: a leg or foot that is getting weaker, for example your foot drags, catches on the ground or slaps down when you walk (foot drop). Get medical advice the same day. Until it has been checked, use your walking aid, hold a rail on stairs and keep off uneven ground, because a foot that catches trips you and a fall onto a new knee can damage it. If the weakness is getting worse by the hour, go to an emergency department.
- Same day: new numbness, tingling or burning in your lower leg or foot, beyond the numb patch of skin around your scar. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. If it started after a fall or an injury, or your foot or toes turn cold, pale, blue or gray, call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Same day: dizziness, lightheadedness, blurred vision or feeling faint when you stand up that is new for you, does not pass within a minute or two, keeps happening, or has made you fall. Sit or lie down, and get medical advice the same day. This can be a drop in blood pressure on standing (postural hypotension), a type of low blood pressure, which the NHS lists among the causes of falls, and your doctor can check it. Tell them about your medicines, because some can cause it. If it does not settle within a few minutes of sitting or lying still, call emergency services. If you faint, call emergency services, even if you come round quickly, because the NHS says to call them when someone faints while exercising or is badly hurt, and a fall onto a new knee can damage it.
- Same day: dizziness or feeling faint during or after exercise, other than the brief lightheadedness as you stand up covered in the line above, without any of the emergency signs above. Stop the exercises and get medical advice the same day. If you faint, it does not settle within a few minutes of sitting still, or you cannot stand or walk steadily, call emergency services.
Book an appointment
- Within a few days: your knee is not bending or straightening any further from week to week, is getting stiffer, or feels unstable or gives way when you stand or walk. This is not an emergency, but contact your physio or surgical team within the next few days rather than waiting for your next routine appointment, and keep using your walking aid until they have checked it. A stiff knee is easier to free up early than late: where it has to be freed up under anesthetic, doing that earlier, generally within about 6 to 12 weeks of the operation, is associated with regaining more movement than doing it later, although how much any one knee gains also depends on how stiff it was to begin with, on who is suitable and on the rehabilitation afterward. So the date you raise it matters (Hosanee and colleagues, 2026). If the knee has given way and let you fall, or it gives way on stairs, hold a rail and use your walking aid every time, and stay off stairs on your own until you have been seen.
- Within a few days: new or worsening pain when you put your weight through the operated leg, or a limp that is getting worse or has stopped improving from month to month. Go back to your walking aid and contact your physio or surgical team within the next few days rather than waiting for your next routine appointment. Most of the time this is strength, swelling or too much too soon, but new pain on weight bearing is also how a loosening implant or a crack in the bone around it first shows itself, and that is found by examining and scanning the knee rather than by waiting to see.
- Within a few days: you have had a fall, even if you were not hurt, or you keep tripping, stumbling or feeling that your legs might give way. Book an appointment with your doctor within a few days and ask about a falls assessment. Tell them about every fall, even the ones where you were not hurt.
Common questions
How long do you use a walker after a knee replacement?
The NHS gives the only sourced answer in this area, and it is written as a sequence rather than a schedule: crutches or walking sticks at first, down to one crutch and then a walking stick when you feel confident, and then trying to walk without an aid after about 6 weeks if you feel ready. The same equipment is called a walker in the United States and Canada and a frame in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Where your own team has told you something different, including any limit on weight through the leg, theirs is the instruction that counts.
How long do you use a cane or stick after a knee replacement?
The stick is usually the last thing to go and it often outlasts people's expectations, particularly outdoors. The NHS puts the stick after crutches in the sequence and ties moving on from it to feeling ready rather than to a week. In clinic the common pattern is giving it up indoors some time before giving it up outside, which is a sensible order rather than a sign of slow progress, because a flat hallway is not a wet sidewalk with a curb in it.
Do I need a walker at all after a knee replacement?
You will be walking with something at the start, and which thing is settled on the ward by the people who watch your first steps rather than beforehand. The NHS names crutches or walking sticks for the early days, and it names a frame too, which suits some people better because of their balance, their arms or the layout of their home, so starting on one is a different starting point and not a worse one. A limit on how much weight goes through the leg usually settles the question, because that limit cannot be kept to on a single stick. Ask your team which aid they expect you to go home with, since that is also the one worth practicing with before the operation.
How do I know I am ready to stop using it?
Look at how you walk rather than at the calendar. The things a physio watches are whether you walk without a limp, whether your pain and swelling are the same the next morning after a walk as they were before it, whether you are steady turning, stopping and changing direction, whether you can handle a slope and uneven ground, and whether you can carry something in one hand without your balance going. If your team gave you a weight-bearing limit, that comes before all of those checks, and none of them applies until the limit is lifted, because every one of them puts your full weight through the operated leg. OrthoInfo is clear about whose decision it is in the end: your surgeon and your physiotherapist help you decide which aids you need and when they can safely be stopped. Try the first version of it indoors, in daylight, with a counter or a wall in reach, not on a trip out.
Is it bad to use a stick for longer than other people?
No, and the comparison is the problem rather than the stick. The two errors do not cost the same: a few extra weeks on a stick costs you some inconvenience, while a fall is a different order of problem, because OrthoInfo warns that a fall in the first few weeks after surgery can damage the new knee and may lead to further surgery. Using one longer than the person in the next bed is not a mark of a worse recovery, and nobody reviewing your knee will think so.
How long until I can walk normally again?
That is a longer question than the walking aid one, and the two get muddled. Putting the aid down means you are safe without it. Walking without a limp means the leg is strong enough and confident enough to do a full job, which usually arrives later, and the NHS puts full recovery at several months or longer. If you are off the aid but still limping, that is normally strength and habit rather than something being wrong, and it is what the later strength work is for.
References
- NHS. Recovering from a knee replacement. Page last reviewed 9 September 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/knee-replacement/recovery/
- American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Total knee replacement. OrthoInfo. https://www.orthoinfo.org/en/treatment/total-knee-replacement/
- South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Post total knee replacement management. Patient information, 26 February 2025. https://www.southtees.nhs.uk/resources/post-total-knee-replacement-management/
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Joint replacement (primary): hip, knee and shoulder. NICE guideline NG157. Published 4 June 2020. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng157
- Hosanee S, Elebo N, Sikhauli N, Pietrzak JRT. Reluctant knee: understanding and managing stiffness after total knee arthroplasty. International Orthopaedics. 2026;50(9):2337-2346. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00264-026-06905-0
- Stevens JA, Thomas K, Teh L, Greenspan AI. Unintentional fall injuries associated with walkers and canes in older adults treated in U.S. emergency departments. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2009;57(8):1464-1469. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19555423/
- NHS. Anticoagulant medicines. Page last reviewed 9 September 2024. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/anticoagulant-medicines/
- NHS. Rivaroxaban. Page last reviewed 5 August 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/rivaroxaban/
- NHS. Falls. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/falls/
- NHS. Low blood pressure (hypotension). Page last reviewed 11 July 2023. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/low-blood-pressure-hypotension/
- NHS. Fainting. https://www.nhs.uk/symptoms/fainting/
- NHS. Sepsis. Page last reviewed 14 May 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sepsis/
Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-10-17.
This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.