[Current advances and future direction of arthroscopic surgery for disorders in the knee joint]

An aim of this paper is to report current advances and future direction of arthroscopic surgery for disorders in the knee joint. Recently, advances of operative techniques and improvement of surgical instruments allow almost all disorders in the knee joint cavity to be arthroscopically treated. Patients of the age greater than 3 years can undergo this surgery. Arthroscopic surgery involves release of synovial malformation, capsular strung, and postoperative adhesion, removal of free bodies, excision of benign tumors, partial synovectomy, multiple drilling or pinning of osteochondral lesions, partial or total meniscectomy, plastic resection of bony spurs, repair of the torn menisci and ligaments, reconstruction of ligaments and menisci, and etc. Arthroscopic surgery has many advantages compared with open surgery: First, more precise operation can be performed in arthroscopic surgery, resulting in better final outcome, because this surgery gives rather wider visual field for intraarticular operation. Secondly, arthroscopic surgery is less invasive. Therefore, patients have less postoperative pain and adhesion, quickly regain the normal range of knee motion, and early return to the normal activities. Thirdly, operation scar after arthroscopic surgery is more acceptable for patients from the cosmetic viewpoint. There are few disadvantages in arthroscopic surgery if well-trained surgeons carefully operate patients according to the correct indications of this surgery. In the near future, arthroscopic surgery will be more frequently and wide-spread performed in Japan. Therefore, instructional and training systems for arthroscopic surgeons should be established as soon as possible. Improvement of the hardware involving arthroscopes and surgical instruments may be one of keys for future advances of arthroscopic surgery.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)