Next Tuesday, March 15, the Hospital de Clínicas of the Faculty of Medicine (UNA) will perform a day of knee arthroscopy surgeries on six adult patients with sports pathologies, in charge of professionals from the Chair and Service of Orthopedics and Traumatology.
Dr. Luis Fernando Martínez, a specialist in orthopedic surgery, explained that they are scheduled to perform arthroscopy interventions on patients who were previously diagnosed and treated in the service. He pointed out that with this initiative, what is intended is to reduce the number of patients on the waiting list registered by the Knee Unit of the teaching hospital.
“These types of marathon days are quite interesting precisely because it allows us to reduce the number of patients we have on the waiting list in the Knee Unit, and there are quite a few, since we have clinics weekly where we have a high flow of patients. ”, it meant.
The specialist referred that there are two types of patients who come to this service; In the first place, there are those who come by reference and trust to other professionals, while others come by referral from other private hospitals, even insured by the Social Welfare Institute.
Martínez mentioned that those who most often go to the Knee Unit of the Hospital de Clínicas are young people who during the practice of some sport or physical activity suffer injuries that require medical treatment.
“The most affected of the knee are young athletes, generally, and those who practice soccer; they are the ones who most frequently get injured and end up with knee pathologies”, he pointed out.
On the other hand, the traumatologist referred to the criteria to qualify for these days of knee arthroscopy surgeries. He indicated that what is taken into account is that the evaluated cases of the patients do not require long hours in the operating room and that, likewise, they do not require hospitalization for the post-surgical recovery process.
The Knee Unit of the Chair and Service of Orthopedics and Traumatology of the Hospital de Clínicas attends on Mondays and Fridays, prior scheduling through the enabled call center line of the hospital. Also, patients who come to the service are scheduled for consultation with the specialist.
Thanks to technical advances that made it possible to develop high-resolution cameras and high-definition monitors, arthroscopy is a very effective tool for treating knee problems. It is a common surgical procedure that is performed through small incisions, where the orthopedic surgeon inserts the arthroscope (an instrument with a small camera the size of a pencil) into the knee joint.
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In this way the professional can repair or remove the injured tissue; To do this, small surgical instruments are inserted through other incisions around the knee. According to the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine, more than 4 million knee arthroscopies are performed worldwide each year.
