Patient Experiences

I am M.B. and I recently went through arthoscopic knee surgery and thought I would share the experience. The following are photos detailing the process. The first two are MRIs of my left knee before the operation and the rest are taken during the operation using a scope. All the photos were provided by Dr. Stone of the Stone Clinic in San Francisco.

In the MRI above left, the blue arrow is pointing to the culprit, that small white shadow is a tear in the meniscus. The meniscus is a gasket-like thing that helps cushion the top and bottom of the knee when you put weight on your leg.

In the MRI above right, the arrow is pointing at the bone surface of the femur. Those black splotches could have meant a cartilidge graft and would have meant 4 weeks on crutches if it had turned out to be a problem.

 

Now we're in the operating room. In the photo at upper left, three small holes around the knee allow tubes with specialized instruments down into the inner spaces. The ends of the leg bones are those upper and lower white surfaces and in this image we can see the frothy-looking piece of torn meniscus. 

Upper right, a careful bit of cutting and the offending bit is gone, leaving the rest of the meniscus intact behind.

Lower left offers a quick check of the outer part of the meniscus, this is what meniscus should look like. My injury was on the inside portion of my left knee. The tip of the probe you see in these photos is 1 millimeter across, to give you an idea of the size. 

Lower right, bonus photo! This is a passing shot of my ACL, just for fun. Looks nice huh? I hope no one is eating lunch.