Exactly what I was going to say. It seems pretty harsh to reduce someone's relative down to
Hmm...a few thousand £££'s spent on someone with a very limited life expectancy or about £50 on a decent knee brace that will most likely last as long as she'll need it for.
Speaking purely from a personal standpoint, and not in any argument for what the NHS should do in this situation - it also depends on what the "quality of life" would be in each scenario.
For me, I HATE wearing knee braces...they're hot, they get sweaty, I usually don't feel that much more secure in them (unless they're the kind with the metal rails to keep your knee perfectly straight/stable, and then I feel like I can't move, plus the brace weighs a ton).
That said, I would much rather wear a brace (especially if it's one of those slipon ones without metal) than do another knee surgery. I had an ACL replaced a few years ago, and rehab was really not fun. Granted, now (6 years later), my knee is doing fine without any braces, but it still swells up and gets sore pretty often (which wasn't happening pre-surgery). (For the record, I also have a pretty high tolerance for pain, and don't have an aversion to surgery in general.) Surgery ended up being a good choice for me, I think, since my knee is now a lot more stable (even if it does tend to overreact to minor scrapes and gets sore easily), plus I had the surgery done when I was 23, so the rehab time to benefit time was a pretty good ratio.
Anyway, I think balancing the level of inconvenience is also an issue...is the person willing to wear a brace when needed, would rehab take ages/be painful, would the time spent in rehab/recovery be outweighed by the time afterwards being hassle-free (assuming that's possible), etc.
