Imagine 98 loose bones in your Knee!, 60-year-old Mrs. Arukani Ammal, who hails from Karoor in Tamil Nadu, started feeling knee pain 15 years back, at first she ignored it. When the pain persisted, she consulted a doctor who advised her to undergo a surgery; but the fear of surgery forced her to disregard the pain for some more time. But as the time passed by the pain kept increasing and made her everyday work highly painful as she was unable to walk, climb stairs or sit cross legged. . When she could bear it no more, she decided to consult the specialist.

She came to Wockhardt Bone & Joint Care at Bannerghatta Road for further treatment. Upon preliminary examination, the tem of Orthopedics felt a few bony pieces lying loose in the knee joint and she was unable to bend the knee joint entirely. An X-Ray was advised for further diagnosis.

"When we got her X-ray reports we were surprised to find multiple bony loose bodies in the knee joint." says Dr. Srinivas J.V. This situation is called synovial chondromatosis. Generally in this condition there will be some bone formation in the synovial sheath (tissue covering the knee). Normally these bone pieces vary from 2 to 5 mm in size. Very infrequent occasions there may be 2 to 3 large bone pieces. At the same time her knee was severely arthritic. So we decided to perform total knee replacement.

"On the operation table when we opened the knee joint we noticed there were 98 loose bone pieces that were ranging from 5 mm to 40mm. Most of them were loose and few had attached themselves to the synovium of the joint." Dr. Srinivas added.

After a long process of removing each loose bony piece on by one, the knee joint damaged by arthritis was replaced by a prosthetic joint, a frequent procedure called Total Knee Replacement. Two days after the surgery Arukani Ammal is able to walk without pain and can move her knee entirely. She has been discharged after 4 days and has gone back to her hometown Karoor.

"Fear of surgery and lack of awareness made me stay away from getting the treatment done. But now I am really wonderful and can move around independently." says an elated Arukani Ammal.