Torn meniscus - to repair or not to repair?

peptic

Thank you for clarifying "no shot".

PT does not have a thought about how much more improvement I should expect.
My orthopedic surgeon suggested additional physical therapy (which is about 50% complete), and then an evaluation will be conducted.
After 50%, I am not 100% and still have pain every once in a while.
The funny thing is that the knee with the problem is about 20% larger than the good knee on the right side. Everything is healing, but perhaps that knee will always be larger based on the way the tear healed?

Great news that you are still making progress @richtar !

I will be interested to hear how your knee feels when you done with PT. It sounds like you are starting another good list of questions for your surgeon.

Thank you, Janell, Mentor.
I will let you know about the questions for the surgeon as well as his responses.

Unfortunately we are not surgeons and that is a surgical question. It also depends on the way you use your body. It is not enough to know the circumstance that it finds itself in. I wasn’t sure I saw your age mentioned, but that makes a huge difference. I was told by a surgeon that meniscus tear don’t heal after a certain age and surgery is required. My dog tore his; open parentheses I learn a lot from my vets too!) because it was a partial tear they didn’t do surgery and they stimulated scar tissue to form. They gave him micronized glucosamine, stimulated scar tissue with an infrared heat treatment and gave me instructions for how to let it heal over four months. You will have to consult with an orthopedic surgeon. No one here can be in your shoes, no one here will have access to your doctors and your medical records. If you want Information in order to make a decision, then I suggest if you don’t intuitively trust the orthopedic surgeon you do see try three more! My fourth one was the kicker! You wouldn’t believe the variety of crazy things they put down in their evaluations. The point is you must get the best surgeon available to you and get a competent diagnosis for treatment. Good luck.

Hello! I am just looking for any advice for a meniscus tear and how you made out. I tore mine last week playing pickleball and am still waiting to get in to see an ortho dctr. I did get a cortisone shot and now realize that may have been a mistake but needed to do something for the pain.

Good morning - where do I begin? First, let me tell you that with my surgery I was my own worst enemy. I had two tears - one significant, had an excellent surgeon and an actual good outcome - all except, I felt so good that I used it too much right off the get- go and then my Bakers cyst ruptured a week later. Then after recovering, ever so slowly, from that about six weeks later I fell down a couple of steps and wrenched my knee to the side and back. My biggest error in all of this was not having a good physical therapist in place before surgery because it was nearly impossible to find one locally after the fact. The one I did find was pretty bad and I quit after two sessions worried he would do more damage. Silly me. I thought I could rehab it myself. Because I had major surgery in February followed two weeks later with emergency surgery and a few months recovery from all of that I just let my knee do its thing. So, a year later I’m now going to tend to my knee which has caused hip pain because of a weird gait. Would I do the partial meniscectomy again? Absolutely. Would I do it differently post-op? Absolutely. The surgery smoothed out the mess inside my knee and it made my knee feel more stable. P.S. I also had a cortisone injection initially and it helped for a little while. My PA made sure that I understood that I also have osteoarthritis in my knee and that the surgery would not help with that situation.
Good luck! Keep in touch and let me know how it all goes!

Wow, you poor girl!! We are all dealing with our own setbacks for sure!! I will keep you posted and will be praying you stay well too!!

@terrie10 , sorry to see you had such pain. Mine never hurt bad enough for a shot. Anyway, since I posted upthread I have gotten a little better. I have some flares, but they aren’t huge and I’m not sure if it’s the meniscus injury or not. It tends to flare if I walk on uneven surfaces for a distance. The treadmill is fine. At this point, I am still satisfied with my decision to hold off on surgery. Maybe, my injury wasn’t as severe as others. I think mine took a year to heal, though I’ve read it can’t heal…..mine seems to have. I haven’t gotten another MRI, so I just go by what I feel.

My younger brother, who is 50, had surgery for his torn meniscus. He had significant pain with his. It went well, but he seems to have had a lot of trouble ever since. He recently had to remove a cyst that developed near the site. It feels better, but….he struggles. I sure hope he fully recovers. He felt he had no choice when he had surgery.

I wish you all the best. I’m glad I got a second opinion.

Thank you so much for the info. It is really so hard to know what to do. I would love to not have surgery if possible so praying they give me that as an option. Stay healthy!!