Compression Stockings After Surgery: How Long to Wear Them and How to Get Them On

Why you have them

After surgery you move less, and the blood in your leg veins moves less with you. Slow-moving blood can clot, and a clot in a deep vein of the calf or thigh, a deep vein thrombosis, is the complication surgeons work hardest to prevent. If a piece breaks off and travels to the lungs it becomes a pulmonary embolism, which can be fatal.

Anti-embolism stockings, often called TED stockings after one brand, squeeze the leg most tightly at the ankle and less higher up. That gradient pushes blood back towards the heart and stops it pooling in the calf. UK guidance recommends them for most people having surgery who are at raised risk of clots, usually alongside a daily blood-thinning injection or tablet, and the stockings are the part that continues at home.

They are not the same as the compression socks sold for flying or for varicose veins, which come in different pressures and lengths. If you need more, your team will tell you.

How long to wear them

The honest answer is: for as long as your surgical team said, and if they did not say, ask. The general pattern is this.

Wear them until you are back to your normal level of mobility. After a hip or knee replacement that is commonly around four to six weeks. After keyhole abdominal surgery it may be a week or two. The reason is the risk, not the operation: the stockings are doing their job while you are sitting and lying more than you normally would, and once you are up and walking normally through the day that job is done.

Wear them day and night. They come off for washing and for a shower, and go straight back on. Some teams allow them off overnight once you are walking well; unless yours has said so, keep them on.

If you were given blood-thinning injections or tablets to take at home, the stockings and the medication work together. Finishing one does not mean stopping the other.

Getting them on without help

This is the part that defeats people, especially anyone who has just been told not to bend past ninety degrees at the hip. The stockings are tight by design, and pulling them up a leg you cannot reach is genuinely difficult. The tricks below are the ones physiotherapists teach.

Put them on first thing. Legs are least swollen in the morning, before you have been upright. If they come off for a shower, put them back on straight away while you are still sitting on the edge of the bed.

Roll, do not pull. Turn the stocking inside out down to the heel so you are holding a short cuff. Put your foot in, get the heel seated in the heel pocket, then unroll the stocking up the leg rather than dragging the whole thing. A little talc on a dry leg helps it slide.

Use gloves. Rubber washing-up gloves, or purpose-made donning gloves with a ribbed palm, grip the fabric far better than fingers and let you smooth out wrinkles without tearing the stocking or pinching your skin. This is the cheapest and most effective single tip.

Use a frame if you cannot reach your foot. A stocking applicator is a wire or plastic frame that holds the stocking open. You step into it, hold the handles, and pull the frame up the leg, which draws the stocking on without bending at the hip. For anyone with hip precautions, or a stiff knee, or a healing abdomen, it turns a two-person job into a one-person one. The same frame works for ordinary socks.

Check the fit. Knee-length stockings should end two finger-widths below the crease of the knee. The top should not roll or dig in, there should be no wrinkles, and the heel pocket should sit on your heel. A stocking that is bunched behind the knee is tighter there than at the ankle, which is the opposite of what you want.

Washing them, and why you want two pairs

Stockings lose their compression as they age and as they get dirty. Wash them every day or two in mild soap and warm water, rinse, and let them air dry; a tumble dryer wrecks the elastic. That only works if you have a second pair to wear while the first dries, which is why a spare pair is the one purchase in this guide that nearly everyone should make. Hospitals often send you home with one pair. Ask for two, or buy a second in the same size and length.

Replace them if they become loose, laddered or baggy at the ankle. A stocking that no longer squeezes is not doing anything.

Getting the size right

Anti-embolism stockings are sized by measuring the calf, and for thigh-length ones the thigh too, plus the length of the leg. The hospital measured you. If you buy a replacement pair, buy the same size and length, and measure again if your legs have changed a lot with swelling. A stocking that is too tight is uncomfortable and can mark the skin; one that is too loose is useless.

When to take them off and call someone

The stockings should feel firm, not painful. Take them off and check the leg twice a day, and contact your team if you notice:

Pain, tenderness, warmth or swelling in one calf, particularly if it is worse than the other side. That is the pattern of a clot, and the stocking does not rule it out.

Sudden breathlessness, chest pain that is worse when you breathe in, or coughing up blood. These are signs of a clot on the lung. Call emergency services.

Numbness, tingling, or toes that go pale, blue or cold while the stocking is on. It is too tight or has rolled. Take it off and check the fit.

Skin that is broken, blistered or marked where the top of the stocking sits, or behind the knee.

If the stockings are simply intolerable, do not quietly stop wearing them. Tell your team, because there is usually an alternative that works for you.

When you can stop

When your team said you could, or when you are back to walking normally through the day and they have confirmed you no longer need them. Until then, they are the least glamorous and one of the most effective pieces of kit you were sent home with. Two pairs, a pair of gloves, and a frame if you cannot reach your feet, and they stop being a daily battle.