5 Ways To Tell You Might Unfortunately Have A Failed Meniscus Surgery

Meniscus surgery does not always turn out successful. If you think you might have a failed meniscus surgery, then this video is going to help you decide if you need to go visit your surgeon or not, I’m going to give you five ways to tell you my unfortunately have a failed meniscus surgery. And along the way, I’ll also give you some tips to try to salvage your situation.

Now these five ways are in ascending order. In other words, the first one is not that bad, and they get more severe as they go along. I’ll explain as I go along. The first way is having pain on the joint line. And the way you can find your joint line. I’ll show you myself in just a moment. But let me show you the model here.

Here’s a knee joints, this is the right knee, the thigh bone is right up here. And then the shin bone is right up here on the bottom. It’s the tibia. And this is the fibula, this bluish gray structure. Light blue thing right here is the meniscus. So the meniscus sits between the thigh bone and the shin bone. And it’s right below the kneecap, here’s the kneecap right there.

So if you can make a circle with your hands, like this, around your knee, with both hands right below the kneecap, then you’re on the meniscus very likely. So you would make a ring with your fingers just like this. And then put it around your knee right below the kneecap, there’s my kneecap right there. And that’s about where the joint line is.

If your pain is in that area, then that coincides with where your meniscus is. Now, it’s completely possible that you’ve just flared up your meniscus. And you didn’t necessarily mess up to surgery at this point, if you simply have pain.

Now the next way you can tell is if you have chronic swelling in the same area where you made that ring around your knee, where the meniscus is, especially if you got it in the area that you know your meniscus was torn.

Oftentimes people that have a meniscus tear and then have a surgery afterwards, whether it’s a mastectomy, or a meniscus repair, they know what part of the meniscus they got repaired or operated on.

They know if it’s the posterior the back side or the front side, or if it’s the inside part or the outside part, because that meniscus covers the entire knee joint. If you have swelling in the area in the region where you know you had your surgery, then that’s going to coincide with potentially an injury to the surgical sites.

Now in both these situations, if you have increased pain, and increased swelling in that area of the meniscus, you need to make sure you get off your feet, get back on crutches at least use a cane so that you can take pressure off the meniscus and allow it to heal. That might save you from further damaging that area of your meniscus.

The third way you can tell that you might have a meniscus surgery failure is if you have a loss of motion, if you suddenly can’t fully straighten out your knee, or you’re not able to bend it as much as you used to, and this change within the same day or within the last day or two, then that’s a sign that there’s some obstruction inside the knee joint messing with the mechanics, that’s not letting you move normally.

And it could be that the surgical site was messed up somehow, it could also be associated with just inflammation in the area that the meniscus actually thickening because of inflammation. Think of inflammation, like on your skin. Like if you were to scratch your skin, it gets red and thicker for a moment, and then it’ll go away. And of course, if you break your skin like if you cut it open, it gets red and swollen.

The same thing happens on the inside of her body, the meniscus can potentially thicken a bit and that can limit your motion. It doesn’t necessarily mean at this point that you have a failed meniscus repair or a mastectomy issue.

It just means that you flared it up. If you can calm it down by getting off your knees, go back on those crutches maybe get a cane, then there’s potential that it can return back to baseline to where you were before you flirted up. And you didn’t actually have a failed meniscus surgery yet.

The fourth way you can tell that you might have a failed meniscus surgery is if you hear increased sounds coming from your knee. Now it’s normal to have popping and clicking sounds happening occasionally.

Especially if you haven’t been moving around like first thing in the morning, when you first go to move out of bed, you might get a pop or a click in your knee and as long as it doesn’t hurt or even if it hurts a tiny bit.

But it fleet’s you know goes away, it doesn’t hang out, then you’re okay, that’s normal, that’s associated sounds with just the joint being a little stiff, and then you loosening it up when you first go to move.

But where there is a problem is if you have a consistent popper click, and especially if it’s associated with pain, like every time you pop and click, when you go to bend your knee or straighten your knee a certain way or put pressure on in a certain way, then that is not a good sign.

That means it’s something inside is shifted or moved around. And it’s blocking how your knees moving or it’s not allowing for normal motion to happen. It’s making a sound every time it rubs on itself and potentially injuring the area further, if there’s pain and swelling associated with this clicking sound. Now some people have crunching rather than popping or clicking that crunching is consistent.

That’s just a sign that there’s some friction And inside the joint as it moves, it could be beginning signs of osteoarthritis, or some irregularity in the surfaces of the meniscus, it’s not smooth anymore. And so it just makes a grinding crunching sound. Whenever you move your knee as long as it’s not associated with pain, and it’s not getting any worse as time goes on, then that’s okay, too, you might always have a crunchy or a grindy knee, and it might pop or click.

Occasionally, when it’s a problem is if it happens very consistently. And it’s getting worse over time. And there’s pain and swelling associated with it, be sure to monitor the popping or clicking so that you can tell if it’s getting worse or not. And if the swelling and pain goes down, if you had any, and you’re still getting a lot of poppy and clicking and it’s associated with some pain, that’s a sign that you might have possibly injured the meniscus.

So you just have to watch out and make sure that you take it easy if this begins to happen. The fifth way you can tell that something could be wrong with your surgery is if you get joint walking, this is one of the more severe problems that happens with meniscus injuries. And this happens even with people that have not had surgery, but it is more likely to happen in somebody who’s got a failed meniscus surgery.

This means that you go to move, maybe you’re getting out of bed or out of a chair, or maybe you’re in the middle of walking and you take a funny step, or you turn in usually, and then all of a sudden your knee gets stuck and you can’t straighten it out or bend it, it’s just stuck in the same position. It’s usually in a partially bent position. And it’s painful.

Usually people sit down, their leg kicks out and they have to kind of shake it loose and move it around. That’s just the reflex that happens. And then it kind of loosens up and you can bend your knee again. Usually there’s pain associated with it afterwards, like it feels like it did something to it. And if this happens once in a while, that’s okay, that might happen anyway.

But if it’s happening more frequently, especially if it’s on an every other day basis, or everyday basis, multiple times a day, that’s serious, you need to make sure that you go see somebody about that now may happen just spontaneously here and there. Because you may have got some swelling in the joint catches on itself on the meniscus, because there’s an obstruction from the swelling and it locks.

But it’s of concern when it’s happening in an increased frequency, it’s happening more often. And especially if it’s more painful when it happens, it means that maybe there’s a flap from the meniscus repair that is no longer attached to where it’s supposed to now it’s blocking your motion when you move it a certain way.

So let’s talk about what to do next. In case you suspect that you might have a meniscus surgery failure. If it’s just pain and swelling, no need to worry yet make sure to get off your feet, get on some crutches or get a cane, make sure that you’re not doing anything to challenge you’re need to take it take a step back, reduce the amount of exercise that you’re doing, make sure that you’re allowing your knee to calm down so that it’s no longer painful and no longer swelling, you may find that you got back to baseline and you’re just fine.

If you have pain and swelling and you also hear more noise coming from your knee, and you possibly even have a reduced amount of motion in your knee, you can’t bend it or straighten it all the way, then there’s still time, you can still save this, it may not be a failed meniscus surgery yet, be sure to take those precautions that it just said Get off your feet rested, stop doing anything that challenges it, let it calm down.

You may just have irritated it, you need to make sure you track back to your activities to see what may have caused this so that you don’t do that again. But after getting increased joint locking, especially painful joint locking, and it’s happening more frequently. And it’s more and more painful than you absolutely need to call the surgeon at some point soon.

Give it a couple of days. And if you find that it’s not reducing, then call the surgeon they’ll instruct you on whether to wait a little bit longer or to go ahead and make an appointment and come on in. And it would be wise of you to get on the crutches anyway, just to make sure that you’re not making it any worse in case you did kind of mess up the surgery.

And there’s a possibility that you didn’t mess up the surgery anyway. But what will happen next is if you end up going to the surgeon’s office, they’re going to examine you of course get a history See what’s been going on over the past few days, few weeks, however long it’s been since you last saw the surgeon and if appropriate, they may ask you to go get an MRI arthrogram which is an MRI, where they inject dye inside your knee joint so that that dye can get inside all the little cracks and crevices.

And especially if you had a meniscus repair surgery where the edges of the repair was made, they can see the dye gets in there then that’s a sign that it’s not healing appropriately or that you may have toured a part of it. Now hopefully your knee doesn’t turn into that situation and you’re able to salvage it and make sure that you heal normally moving on forward.

So make sure you take the right precautions and don’t overdo it with your meniscus. Hey, I hope this video was helpful for you please give it a thumbs up if it was share this with somebody you think needs to hear this. And don’t forget to subscribe and hit your notification bell so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos. We post each and every week. Thanks so much and I’ll see you in the next video. Bye