Knee Surgery and Therapy

We bend and stretch our knees a thousand times a day. As they take us from A to B, they carry 3.5 times our body weight. However, knee pain can turn the simplest movements – climbing stairs or squatting down – into a real challenge.

We Force Pain Down to Its Knees

The knee is the joint that is most susceptible to injury. As a knee specialist, I meticulously get to the bottom of your pain in my practice in Graz. The important harmony between ligaments, tendons, cartilages, muscles and bones can be restored by early diagnosis, supportive therapies and, if necessary, surgeries.

Meniscus Rupture

The meniscus is a fibrous cartilage that distributes the pressure of movement evenly and acts as the knee joint’s shock absorber. A classic sign for problems with it is pain when squatting down and a swollen knee after prolonged exertion. A meniscus rupture can be caused by overexertion, a sports injury or natural wear (aging).

Therapy and Surgery

Depending on the severeness, the meniscus rupture can be treated with conservative methods such as pain therapy or physical therapy. However, if the rupture is too large, surgery is absolutely necessary. The meniscus moves freely in the knee joint. If it is too badly damaged, this can have serious consequences to your mobility, such as lifelong knee complaints. With an arthroscopy the rupture is either stitched or removed. If a rupture was only cut out, the knee can be immediately burdened again. In the case of a stitched meniscus, we will guide you through the healing process with physical therapies.

Cruciate Ligament Rupture

The two cruciate ligaments guide the knee joint in motion and serve as its stabilizers – without them we would literally have wobbly legs! If something is wrong with one of them, you usually notice it in an unreliable step, combined with stabbing knee pain and a swollen joint. If these symptoms do not appear after several days, a rupture of the cruciate ligament could be the cause, with the anterior ligament being most affected. Usually such a rupture is caused by an injury during sports or due to a traffic accident. The knee is overstretched and turned at the same time.

Therapy, Surgery, Transplantation

If only a slight lesion (=rupture) is involved, decongestant pain therapies help to keep the knee joint immobilized.
In an urgent case, however, a cruciate ligament rupture should be treated surgically by arthroscopy. As with the meniscus, the rupture can either be stitched or removed. To restore the cruciate ligament, tendon parts are used as a replacement (= transplant).

Erfahren Sie mehr über den Ablauf einer Operation.