The doctors of Delhi’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Medical Sciences and Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital have done wonders. Doctors of the Orthopedics Department have recently performed India’s first such surgery, in which the knee was not removed but the knee was saved. In this surgery, the damaged meniscus in the knee of a 30 year old patient was removed and replaced with tissue from her body. This has been done to save the patient from the problem of arthritis and to save him from knee transplant for a long time.

about this HOD of Orthopedics Department, Professor Rahul Khare News18hindi Speaking to PTI, he said that this is an important achievement in the field of joint preservation surgery. A 30-year-old female patient who came to the hospital had suffered an injury to her right knee a year ago. For this, the patient had undergone surgery for medial meniscus tear in some other medical center, but after the surgery, the patient continued to have constant knee pain.

The team of doctors from RML Hospital who saved the girl’s knee.

He told, ‘When the patient reached ABVIMS and Dr. RML Hospital for further investigation, after looking closely at all the reports, it was found that along with the meniscus being damaged, the problem of osteoarthritis and varus was also developing in the medial compartment of the knee, which was a challenging situation considering the young age of the patient. Meniscus is very important for the knee and works as a cushion. When it gets damaged, there is no space left between the cartilage and the bone and they start colliding with each other. Continuous rubbing not only causes pain and swelling in the knees, but after some time, knee transplantation becomes necessary. However, knee replacement cannot be advised to the patient at such a young age.

Dr. Khare further said that generally meniscus related diseases are treated by meniscus repair or meniscectomy. Since in this case the meniscus was completely deteriorating, the only option left was meniscectomy, but within a few years the patient would have needed a knee replacement and symptoms of osteoarthritis had also started emerging rapidly.

Keeping this in view, the team of Orthopedics Unit-1 thought of adopting this new technique of surgery which is being done abroad till now. In which semitendinosus autograft (tissue) was taken from the patient’s own body i.e. his thigh and placed in place of the meniscus in the knee. So that this tissue may not be able to perform the function of meniscus in the knee properly and there is no blood circulation in it, but by being present in the middle, it prevents the collision of bones in the knee.

Dr. Khare says that people donate meniscus in foreign countries, but this is not the case in India. In such a situation, a tendon taken from Thai was used to replace the meniscus in RML. This process is also better because it neither requires tissue donation from any other person nor is there any fear of the tissue not matching the patient’s body. Since it is a part of the patient’s body, there are no chances of its side effects and it is easily accepted by other cells of the body. Also, arrangements were made to ensure that knee replacement does not happen at this young age.

He told that this surgery was done on January 13 and the condition of the patient is quite good. Dr. Pranay Gupta, Dr. Ravi Ranjan and Dr. Mohit Raj contributed among the doctors who performed this surgery. This historic achievement represents an important path forward in the field of joint preservation and sports injury management, especially for young patients suffering from post-meniscectomy osteoarthritis. In the coming time, it is expected that such surgeries will be conducted in India and its long-term consequences will also be known.