Knee Plica Syndrome
I went into surgery thinking that the best possible outcome would be my surgeon finding something structurally wrong with my knee that could be repaired. (This seemed doubtful because nothing that could be fixed showed up on the MRI and MRIs are 93% accurate.) I was under the impression that such a repair would still mean that my knee would never be the same again. But I was wrong. I had knee plica syndrome. The surgeon resected the plica, and now he says my knee is "pristine."
The plica is not essential to a well-functioning knee (only 20% of all people have a plica) so I will not be worse for wear without it (like I would have been worse for wear if the surgeon had removed torn cartilage). I am expected to make a full recovery. The surgeon had to reiterate this half a dozen times. I was incredulous. But he thinks I will be able to do go for walks with Joanne, hike, bike, run, jump, squat, and do judo--just the same as I could before. I just need to recover from surgery first.
As a point of interest, this story is much like my own. It captures how difficult my problem was to diagnose and I experienced almost everything this young athlete went through. Although, I was lucky that it only took one arthroscopic surgery to figure out what was wrong with me.It all makes sense now. For some reason a blow to the knee can give rise to knee plica syndrome, and my problems started shortly after I slammed my knee into a door--but my doctors didn't know this. They discounted this fact as irrelevant to my knee pain.
The plica is not essential to a well-functioning knee (only 20% of all people have a plica) so I will not be worse for wear without it (like I would have been worse for wear if the surgeon had removed torn cartilage). I am expected to make a full recovery. The surgeon had to reiterate this half a dozen times. I was incredulous. But he thinks I will be able to do go for walks with Joanne, hike, bike, run, jump, squat, and do judo--just the same as I could before. I just need to recover from surgery first.
As a point of interest, this story is much like my own. It captures how difficult my problem was to diagnose and I experienced almost everything this young athlete went through. Although, I was lucky that it only took one arthroscopic surgery to figure out what was wrong with me.It all makes sense now. For some reason a blow to the knee can give rise to knee plica syndrome, and my problems started shortly after I slammed my knee into a door--but my doctors didn't know this. They discounted this fact as irrelevant to my knee pain.