ACI Surgery Part 1

Those familiar with ACI surgery know there are 2 surgeries required to complete the procedure.  Part 1 involves a minimally invasive procedure to harvest healthy cartilage cells from the patient's own knee and an analysis of the knee to determine if the patient is a good candidate.  The cells are then cultured in a lab for 4-6 weeks then implanted into the cartilage defect during open knee surgery.

I had my scope on 7 May 2015.  I was nervous because I still did not know if I was a good candidate for ACI.  An MRI only shows so much and a surgeon really needs to look inside the knee with a scope to determine to overall health of the knee.  Things I was concerned about included:

1.  Was there enough healthy cartilage surrounding the defect to do the procedure?
2.  Was my defect too large to do ACI?
3.  Was my defect not bad enough to warrant an invasive surgery such as ACI?
4.  Were there more cartilage defects that didn't show up on an MRI?

As it turns out I was a good candidate for ACI.  My knee was very healthy with only a "pothole" of damaged cartilage on the end of my femur which could be fixed by ACI. My cartilage defect was measured at about 1.5 cm.

My recovery after the scope wasn't bad.  I was on Percocet the first and second day after surgery with minimal pain on day 3.  I was walking normally after about 7 days and used crutches for about 5 days.  I had full range of motion after a month.  But it took 3 months to feel the same as before the surgery.  By this I mean I could bend my leg exactly as I could before the surgery.  I do a lot of yoga which requires significant bending of my knees.  Therefore, after 3 months I felt my knee was back to normal.  And by normal I mean I still had the same pain from the cartilage injury but I felt no worse off after the scope.  In fact I did feel a little better.  My surgeon cleaned out some of the debris caused by the damaged cartilage.

Although my cartilage cells would be ready for implantation in 4-6 weeks I opted to have Part II ACI done on 20 Aug 2015 due to work commitments.