What is a Knee Arthroscopy? | Knee Surgery Department

	What is a Knee Arthroscopy?
	Today knee arthroscopy has no real diagnostic utility. Most often clinic data and medical imaging is sufficient to allow for an accurate diagnosis. Therefore its use has been reduced to being a technical surgical aid, that is able to limit functional and cosmetic repercussions.

	The intervention takes place in an operating block under surgical aseptic conditions. The contraindications are the same as for those of open surgery. It is often practised under local or regional anaesthesia. The patient is placed on his back, the thigh of the limb to be operated on is blocked in a stirrup. This permits the operator to reproduce forced knee movements, permitting access to all the knee compartments.

	The arthroscopy requires two incisions of at least 1 cm each, which are made from one part or another of the patellar tendon. Through one of these incisions a miniaturised camera, hooked up to a coloured television screen, is introduced. A permanent arrival of water is regulated by a arthroscopy pump that permits a continuos lavage of the articulation thus offering excellent visibility. Photos or a video film can be taken during the operation.		Camera
	Shaver		Camera

	By another incision, the mechanical instruments – clamps and forceps or motorised shavers can be introduced in order to carry out the actual surgical gesture.

	The incisions are closed by two cutaneous points or with « steri-strips ». The patient can return home that very evening but if a security delay of 6 to 8 hours has not passed, he will leave the next day.

	INDICATIONS FOR A KNEE ARTHROSCOPY Meniscal surgery Technical aid to intraarticular ligament surgery Ablation of intraarticular foreign bodies Release surgery (arthrolysis) Gestures limited to the degree of cartilages Synovial pathology (resection of small tumours, biopsy) Knee cap pathology (very limited space)