Scientific Imaging & Looking Inside a Knee

Nate Kreuter — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:55:10 +0000

Over the summer I was unfortunate enough to require a reconstruction of my Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL). As I was wheeled out of the clinic in an anaesthetic haze, my doctor handed me a series of photos not unlike the ones below.

After this, my second time having an ACL reconstructed, I began to wonder about why doctors would give departing patients "before and after" pictures of the insides of their knee. Without an explanation from a trained professional these pictures are practically meaningless. Is it to prove they actually did their job, that they actually replaced something in the knee? Is it to provide a little something for the scrapbook, so I can fondly remember my summer morning in the outpatient surgery center? At any rate, I think there must be some rhetorical motive for giving patients these types of pictures. And I should point out that this seems to be a convention in orthopaedic surgery. Some doctors even give their patients videos of the surgery shot through fiber optic endoscopes. I'm not sure what all this means. But when my doctor checks his handiwork later today, I'm going to ask. I'll post his answer in the comments section.

viz. - Orthopaedic

Scientific Imaging & Looking Inside a Knee