Oct

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Arthroscopic Knee Surgery

Posted by cameron

October 2, 2007 |

It seems that many people get Arthroscopic knee surgery at sometime in their lives. This is about my experience with the procedure. Although the surgeon can see some obvious things wrong on the x-ray it became apparent that the whole story would not unfold until I was lying on the operating table and he was looking inside the knee. My problem appeared to be the meniscus on both sides of the knee. There are two ways of fixing a torn meniscus; one is to cut out a piece of the cartilage and the other is to sew the torn parts together. The latter can only be done if the tear is relatively short and straight (I was told). Which approach was needed can only be determined by directly looking at it. The surgeon makes three small incisions around the joint for access. He can then insert instruments that enable him to not only see the meniscus but take digital photographs. These were shown to me later because they showed the first signs of arthritis on the bone endings where sports wear and tear over the years had worn down the protective covering. I suspect that any person who has been on this earth for a few decades will exhibit the same.

The actual procedure did not take long. I learned afterwards that one meniscus had to have a part cut out but the other one could be saved with stitches. That’s important because the knee joint is designed to have the weight of your body spread out at the knee joint by that meniscus. The smaller the meniscus the less load spreading and the greater the potential for longer term issues.  As a result of the stitched meniscus my therapy took longer. I probably wasn’t “normal” for 3 months. Without that it probably would have been 2-3 weeks.Therapy itself is worse than the procedure. Even though I worked out more than usual in the weeks before, thinking that it would help with recovery, I had no idea how hard therapy would be. Learning to walk again; daily exercise routines and gritting teeth through pain. I can’t imagine what major surgery must be like. The surgery worked for the most part, although I do have a small issue remaining.

There are some obvious takeaways from this story:

  1. You have to trust in the surgeon because you don’t know exactly what he will do until he is inside you.
  2. Expect a long rehab if he stitches.
  3. Therapy is worse than the surgery.


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