Do they give you a general or is local enough. A friend is considering this surgery and asked me about it. She has a torn meniscus, according to MRI.
Also, is this a good surgery? Any idea of things she should know? Thanks.
Well, I’ve had three knee surgeries for meniscal tears. Two on my left, one on the right. I was put under general anethesia for all of them.
Is it a good surgery? I can walk without limping and grimacing again, so I say yes. If your friends symptoms are minor, there may be other things that can be tried first.
http://www.galttech.com/research/health/meniscus-tear.php
Sorry about the nonlink, couldn’t get the insert link command to work. I’m new here.
Recovery-wise, I spent two days sitting in a reclining chair, not wanting to move. The day after was by far the worst. After 4-5 days, I could take some steps without crutches. They hurt, but I could walk. 1 Week, I could drive a manual transmission car.
Then it was off to PT. 8 weeks of PT, 2 times a week. Once all that was done, my knees still ached for up to 12 months, but it wasn’t anything that a couple of ibuprofen couldn’t take care of.
These were just my experiences, they were consistant with all three surgeries. I’m sure someone elses were different.
Hey, it did put the link in. I am capable of learning.
I had general when I had my knee surgery.
My wife had pins put in her broken wrist. They told her she would have a general but without the paralytic they give for most surgery.
I had an arthroscopy to explore the extent of my arthritis, to flush out debris and trim frayed stuff that was impeding the function of my knee. The results were pretty good. Three and a half years later it is still moving more freely and I am almost free of the sudden agonising stabbing pains that I was previously getting every couple of hundred yards. Unfortunately it revealed that the knee was throughly bolloxed, with a lot of cartillege worn away and I will eventually need a replacement.
I had the op with an epidural. It was most interesting to watch the progress of the surgery on a screen. I was in and out of hospital in a day (my partner was at home to look after me). I was on my feet immediately, though moving around as little as possible – chair to bed to loo. It was very very painful, despite the good meds – dihydrocodeine that I had been given. I persevered with the set of exercises the physio gave me, starting them straight away and doing them every couple of hours. I’m pretty sure I managed a walk to the corner shop within three days and was walking much better than I had been after a month.
The two tiny incision scars on my knee healed quickly and are now barely visible. Having read the link Bowhunter provided I can see how an arthroscopy works for a torn meniscus and fwiw I’d say go for it.
I’ve had the surgery twice. The first time was in 1980, when the procedure was much more invasive than it is now, and I needed general anesthesia, plus overnight in the hospital. The second time I got an epidural, and was able to watch the entire procedure on the monitor. And I went home within a few hours.
If I had health insurance now, I’d have it done again . . . in both knees.
I had a general for this op, woke up later that afternoon and they had me up and walking on crutches and bundled out of the place by the evening.
Make sure you have a crap before you go in to theater rather than leave it til later, you’ll find it difficult to get up off the pot and you’ll need your hands to hold onto things rather than do your business.
I had this surgery with a lateral release in addition to the regular scraping and baking. I was awake for the whole thing, at my request. The surgeon narrated and I got to watch the video. He even went back with the camera to show me stuff that I missed.
They did give me some kind of anti-anxiety medication before they prepped me (your legs goes into a very revealing position when they are setting you up). I felt blurry for several minutes, then normal again by the time the incision was made. They gave me something like novocaine at the incision site.
My request to stay awake was considered unusual, but not wildly so. Nurses indicated that the surgeon particularly enjoyed it when people watched the surgery, so it has happened often enough that he got a reputation. I wouldn’t get general at all. It’s too risky for a procedure that really doesn’t hurt (the lateral release part hurt, but not unbearably so. The recovery was awful.).
The good thing about being awake was that whenever I started feeling a little pain, I told the anesthesiologist, and he gave me a little more pain killer.
The doctor told me that I should have brought a blank video tape (this was before DVDs), so I could always have a tape of the surgery. I told him my entertainment threshold was a little higher than that.
It really depends a lot on what the surgeon is planning to do (hint: she should be asking her surgeon, not an internet message board which doesn’t know any details.).
When I got scraped, the surgeon put me right out. It could be because he thought he might have to do a lot more, but I kind of got the impression that general anesthesia was SOP for him.
Recovery definitely depends on what they’re doing. If they’re just snipping out some tissue, she’d probably walking as soon as the anesthesia wears off. OTOH, if they’re doing microfracture surgery to get cartilige to regrow, she’s on crutches for 4-6 weeks.
I had general when I had my ACL repaired. Turned me off like a lightbulb, no headaches or nausea when I came around. I had a little pack around my neck for three days afterward that delivered local anesthetic to the operation site.
I had an ACL reconstruction last Thursday. It was an outpatient procedure under general anesthesia (Fentanyl I think) with an additional block on the femoral nerve.
Was on Oxycodone extensively for the first 48 hours, and as needed through the weekend. Currently only taking 800 mg Ibuprofen.
From what i understand, meniscal repair is not quite so painful or invasive (they took 8-9 cm of my patellar tendon to rebuild the ACL) but certainly in the same ballpark.
I’ve had arthroscopic surgery twice, and a knee replacement once (so far). Epidural anesthetic each time, along with some kind of anti-anxiety medication that made me pretty sleepy.
I went home within hours of each of the arthroscopic surgeries. Some pain afterwards, managed with tylenol with codeine.
I went home a couple of days after the knee replacement, and was back at work exactly one week later. The surgery was on a Thursday, and the following Thursday I was at my desk. Of course, if I had a job that kept me on my feet all day, that would probably not have been possible.
I’m a bit phobic about general anesthetic. I’ve never had it, and never want to. Hopefully I’ll never have to.