Kneecapped Knee Surgery Report - Microfrature Surgery

Microfracture surgery, what is it and why would athletes have the surgery if there's a large possibility they will never fully recover from it? These questions and Ion’s Take on today’s Kneecapped

Basically, microfracture surgery is glorified butchery. The surgery attempts to stimulate growth of new cartilage by puncturing the surrounding bone with an awl or “ice pick-like device.” That sounds terrific; sign me up for that shit! The body then heals the wounds, and ideally makes it stronger. There’s also some mumbo jumbo about stem cells, but stem cells, even ones your body produces naturally are evil, or so my preacher tells me, so I ignored it.

The success rate isn’t great for microfracture surgery and this surprises me somewhat because it sounds similar to how they fixed my spontaneous pneumothorax, collapsed lung to the layfolk. My lung collapsed when I was 17 or so, for no real reason other than being tall, thin, and male, seriously, this happens to tall and thin people, don't ask. I went into the hospital, had a chest tube rammed into my ribcage to allow my lung to inflate and heal itself. But a week later it relapsed in the Cleveland Circle movie theater while I was watching the dramatic styling’s of David Caruso in Kiss of Death.

The second time, they rammed a chest tube into me and performed surgery. The doctor rubbed the inside of my chest wall making it all bloody and raw so when my lung inflated it would attach all the bloody bits and heal and clot and intermix with it, forming a bond that would last a lifetime. So far so good.

Not so for the microfracture surgery. It now can add another athlete to its hit list.


*Microfracture facts were found in Wikipedia and therefore should be taken with a grain of salt.