If you have knee pain that doesn’t go away with rest and other non-surgical treatments, your healthcare provider may recommend arthroscopic knee surgery.

Arthroscopy is a minimally invasive procedure that allows your surgeon to get a better look at cartilage, bones and soft tissues inside of your knee. Your surgeon uses it to diagnose several types of injuries that affect your ligaments and cartilage in the knee joint.

Injuries among athletes are very common. They can happen in contact sports and those that require jumping, running etc.

Although arthritis causes knee pain, arthroscopic knee surgery isn’t always an effective treatment for osteoarthritis.

Your surgeon performs a knee arthroscopy. This procedure allows the doctor to diagnose injuries and repair them. They can remove damaged or inflamed tissue.

The healthcare provider will use a camera to have a close look at your knee. He/she uses the images of damaged tissues and bones to diagnose the injury, plan treatment and finally repair these tissues.

Based on the injuries your surgeon repair soft tissues and bones. They perform repair on ligaments, tendons, or cartilage using specially designed equipment and treat various conditions of the knee. Your healthcare provider can also remove inflamed tissue (such as the synovium) during the procedure.

Talk to your health care provider about all of your options when it comes to treatment.

The most common conditions treated with knee arthroscopy are soft tissue injuries, fractures, and inflammatory conditions.

Soft tissue injuries are most commonly caused by a sudden movement or direct blow that strains the knee beyond its usual range of motion. 6 Types of Soft Tissue Injuries are Anterior Cruciate Ligament Knee Injuries (ACL), Bursitis, Sprains, Tendinitis, Contusions and Concussions.

Fractures occur when bones break or chip off inside your knee. Pieces of cartilage can sometimes break off when your bone fractures.

Infection and inflammation are two common issues that can occur in your knee joint. Inflammation is called synovitis, and it is caused by the synovium becoming irritated by something such as an injury or infection.

Knee arthroscopy is a minimally invasive outpatient surgery to examine the knee joint. It’s done with local anaesthesia, regional anaesthesia or general anaesthesia.

Local anaesthetic, which numbs the area where your surgeon will make small cuts to insert instruments through the skin into the joint space.

Regional anaesthetic or general anaesthetic, depending on how much of your body is numb when the surgery takes place.

During the knee arthroscopy procedure, your health care provider cleans your leg and leg area. You are administered with anaesthesia. Your provider then irrigates your knee by flushing out the soft tissues and cuts a small hole (incision) in your knee and inserts an arthroscope into it.

The arthroscope has a tiny camera on its tip. A video camera sends images from inside your joint onto a monitor in the operating room where your surgeon can see them. It is used to examine knees with structural, developmental or degenerative tissues, damaged bone or cartilage and remove inflamed tissues. Specialized instruments are used during the procedure that can correct the deficiencies and fix any tears in knee ligaments.

• Realignment of the patella
• Repair or remove of a torn meniscus
• Repair or reconstruction of a torn cruciate ligament
• Removal of tiny torn pieces of articular cartilage
• Removal of inflamed synovial tissue
• Removal of Baker’s cyst
• Removal of loose fragments of bones

Your surgeon will seal each incision with a stitch or steri-strips (tiny adhesive strips), then cover your knee in a comfortable bandage. Braces are sometimes used after surgery to safeguard a repair or reconstruction.

The procedure takes 30 minutes to two hours, depending on your condition.

For 2-4 weeks after the procedure, you will be required to rest. Once you are comfortable resting with no need for anti-inflammatory medications, you provider may recommend specific exercises or refer physical therapist to beginning with range of motion that target your knee — do them as directed, followed by strengthening, progressive weight bearing, and sports specific exercises such as “cutting” and pivoting. The purpose of these exercises is to prevent soft tissue atrophy (wasting away), maintain range of motion, strengthen muscles, improve proprioception (perception of position) under closed chain conditions (with the leg on), and ultimately prepare you for return to sport and activities of daily living.

• Blood clots
• Infection
• Knee Stiffness
• Swelling or Bruising