My new knee CLICKS going downstairs and clunks getting into the car. Normal machinery, or is something loose in there?

Total knee last November, so coming up on six months. Walking is good, stairs are good, pain is honestly better than I dared hope. But my knee has developed a soundtrack. Going DOWN stairs there's a click, click, click, like someone stapling papers in the next room. And when I swing my leg into the car there's one big clunk that I swear the neighbors can hear. It doesn't hurt. It just sounds like something a mechanic should look at.

My sister-in-law (no medical training, endless medical opinions) watched me get in the car Sunday and said "that sounds LOOSE, Bev." So now that word is living in my head rent free. My surgeon's office isn't wrong that my next follow-up is only six weeks away, but six weeks is a long time to lie awake listening to your own knee.

And one more thing while I'm here, because my husband laughs at me: since about a month ago I can feel weather coming in that knee. Not pain exactly, a deep ache the day before a storm rolls in. My grandmother used to say that about her hip and I thought it was an old wives' tale. Now I'm the old wife. Is any of this normal or should I be calling the office instead of posting?

Bev, mine was a one-woman percussion section the whole first year. Stairs, exactly like you describe, and the car clunk too, my husband started announcing "she's in" when he heard it. I asked my surgeon at my one-year visit and he watched me do stairs, pressed around the kneecap, and told me a knee made of metal and plastic simply sounds different than the one I wore out, especially while the muscles around it were still catching up.

Two and a half years out now and it's mostly gone quiet. I notice a click maybe once a week, always on stairs, never with pain. Looking back, the noise faded on about the same schedule as my thigh strength coming back. I'd still bring it up at your follow-up, but I wouldn't lose sleep over a painless click. The word "loose" from a sister-in-law is not a diagnosis.

Four years out, still clicks on the basement stairs, never hurt once. And I'm with you on the weather: my knee calls storms better than channel 7. My husband rolls his eyes right up until he's bringing the porch cushions in because I said so.

Bev in Peoria said:

It doesn't hurt. It just sounds like something a mechanic should look at.

Painless clicking at six months is common, and the mechanics are exactly what Carol's surgeon described. Your knee now works metal on plastic: a cobalt-chromium surface gliding on a polyethylene insert. The natural knee muffles its own movement with cartilage and a meniscus; the replacement has no such padding, so the parts can be audible at moments when the load shifts, which is precisely descending stairs and swinging the leg into a car. When researchers ask directly, somewhere between a fifth and half of people report some clicking or noise in the first year, and it usually quiets down as swelling resolves and the quadriceps strengthen and hold the joint more snugly. Our week by week recovery guide mentions occasional clicking as a normal finding for exactly this reason.

The pattern that earns a call rather than a wait: a sound with PAIN attached, especially a repeatable painful catch or clunk as the knee straightens from a bend. There's a specific, fixable condition called patellar clunk syndrome, where a small nodule of scar tissue above the kneecap catches in the implant as you extend, mostly with certain implant designs. It hurts and it catches, which is what separates it from the harmless clicking you're describing. The other flags are the standard ones: a NEW noise appearing after the knee has been quiet and settled, or any sound arriving with swelling, warmth, instability, or giving way.

On weather: you and Joan are in good company, many patients report a deep ache before a front comes through. Studies looking for a barometric pressure link have gone both ways, so the honest answer is that the sensation is real and reported by a lot of people, the mechanism is unproven, and it does not indicate anything wrong with the implant. Bring the specific movements that make your sounds to your follow-up, ideally ready to demonstrate them, because your own surgeon watching your knee do it is worth more than anything a forum can tell you.

Adding "your knee will click and nobody mentions it" to the list, right under kneeling. Mine does the staple-gun stairs thing too, surgeon shrugged at my six month like I'd asked him about the weather. Which, apparently, our knees also do now.

Follow-up was this morning so I'm closing the loop. The PA had me do the hallway stairs while she watched, pressed all around the kneecap, bent it every direction. No catch, no pain, X-ray fine, her words were "that's the sound of the hardware, not a problem with it." I got sent home with quad exercises and, I quote, "permission to stop listening so hard."

Sister-in-law has been informed the knee is not loose. The clicking is already quieter than in May, or maybe I am. Storm ache remains undefeated though, Joan, big one coming Thursday, you heard it here first.