Coles Notes for the medial meniscus

here is a simple video that does an overview of the surgery I had

Inside my knee!

So I had my 1 month follow up with my surgeon following my meniscectomy, and here are the pictures!

bucket handle tear

this is what was causing my knee so much trouble for the last few years. so outlined in blue is the portion of the medial meniscus (inside portion of the knee) of my left knee that kept jamming up the joint. normally the meniscus sits nice and flat and allows the femur and tibia to slide over each other nice and smoothly, the meniscus acting like a bowl for the femur to sit in so it doesn't move around. Well the lip of my bowl was torn and flipped back on itself, sitting inside the bowl. you can imagine that this doesn't allow the knee to work the way it should.

this kind of tear is called a bucket handle tear because it flips back and forth, sometimes sitting where it should, other times jamming the joint. in this picture it is flipped back. also in this picture the black, empty space is the notch between the two heads of the distal femur. in this notch are the ACL and PCL ligaments.

this is the actual surgery taking place. they used two different tools to take out the torn meniscus. this one is called the "biter" and as you can see, it bites the tissue and snips away large chunks. they also use a tool called the "chewer" but I don't have a picture of that. it is in the video though!

so you can see my femur on the top, my tibia (shin) on the bottom, and the yellow bit is the flap of torn meniscus.

kneecap

so in this picture you can see the joint surfaces between my femur and patella (kneecap). Normally these two bones would be in contact with each other but my knee was pumped full of fluid to allow the surgery so with all that swelling the kneecap is pushed up out of the way. The red arrow shows the direction that the patella glides when you flex your knee. Again, the surfaces look nice and smooth so no damage there.

my ACL

ok, so I did a little side by side of this shot and I outlined some of the important parts. This view is kinda looking from the front if you could take my kneecap off.

The portion in red is my anterior cruciate ligament (the part that Marlito tore in her knees) and it is good and solid. The portion outlined in blue are the two portions of the end of the femur (thigh bone). Nice smooth cartilage on those. You can't really see it so I put it in yellow, but that is about where my posterior cruciate ligament would be. It is also ok.