Call us at 281-633-8600 for an appointment. Dr. J. Michael Bennett discusses knee pain after meniscus tear surgery. He is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon Specializing in knees, shoulders, elbows, and hands, and he serves patients from all over Metro Houston from offices in Sugar Land and Houston.
The following is part of a transcript of the Dr. Jay Show from 1560The Game in Houston, TX. Participating in the discussion are Dr. J. Michael Bennett, a Board
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Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and Sports Medicine Doctor with offices in Richmond and Sugar Land, TX; Danny Arnold, Director of Plex Sports Medicine, Physical Training and Therapy; and Bob Lewis of 1560The Game. If you have an orthopedic or sports medicine issue, please call our office at 281-633-8600 to schedule an appointment. To move to the first section of this Dr. Jay Show, please click this link, and to move to the previous section of the show, which talks about plyometrics, click this one.
Here’s the transcript:
Looks like we’ve got a phone call here from John. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you today?
CALLER – Hey Dr. Jay, thanks for having me on the show. I’m actually in Temple, Texas, listening to you on the Internet. I think it’s pretty cool to call a surgeon and it doesn’t cost me a co-pay (laughter). My question is my father went through some therapy for knee surgery and for some pain associated with it. How do you tell the difference between good pain and bad pain and when to speak up?
Dr. J. Michael Bennett – It depends on the surgery. The pain that a patient has is going to be a little bit different depending on the type of surgery that they had. The pain after a total knee replacement is going to be different than the pain after an ACL, which is different than the pain after a meniscectomy. What kind of surgery did he have?
CALLER – It was a meniscus tear.
Dr. J. Michael Bennett – With a meniscus tear, most patients come back and their pain is pretty minimal after surgery. Patients that come to me with a meniscus tear, I look at their X-rays, I look at their MRIs, I tell them that a meniscectomy, a scope in the knee, will help with the mechanical symptoms. What I mean by mechanical symptoms is when your knee becomes unstable, locks on you or gives out on you, that scope will help you.
Now if you come in and you’ve got an arthritic knee and a worn out joint and you may or may not have a meniscus tear, the scope’s not going to help your arthritis, it’s not going to cure arthritis. And here are your options for arthritic pain. So if he has a situation where the mechanical symptoms got better where he’s not having instability but the arthritic pain is still there, then there are other options whether its steroid injections, something called viscosupplementation which is a lubricant injection which can actually help with inflammation in the joint as well, and, again, therapy.
There are studies that show that therapy helps significantly with knee pain in general and with arthritis. So there are a number of options out there and it just depends, number one, on what the surgery was; number two, what the knee looks like in regards to arthritis versus just a meniscus tear; and number three, whether or not he’s doing any kind of therapy postoperatively.
If you have questions about the information discussed here, please call our office at 281-633-8600. We have two offices serving patients in the metro Houston area — one in Houston in the Galleria area and the other in Sugar Land, TX.
