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Abstract
A 52-year-old woman sustained a direct soft tissue injury to the right knee following a fall onto the right knee. X-rays did not identify any bony injury. Physiotherapy decreased pain but instability persisted. MRI scans identified early degeneration. An orthopaedic opinion recommended total knee replacement. Following a total knee replacement, the pain has worsened and she remains functionally impaired 2 years following the surgical intervention. Knee replacements are commonly performed successful surgical interventions. The increased numbers of replacements might be due to the lowered threshold in recommending surgical intervention by health professionals. This may increase the failure rate. It also raises the question whether adequate non-operative measures were attempted?
- osteoarthritis
- ethics
- orthopaedics
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Footnotes
Contributors GA: planned the article its concept and design; collected part of the data, consent and images; provided guidance to collect research material and edited the manuscript. ET: collected part of the data; performed ancillary research around the article; wrote the first draft of the manuscript and helped in the final edit.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Patient consent for publication Obtained.