“Is local anesthesia used for knee arthroscopy?”
I will have knee arthroscopy. Is local anesthesia used for knee arthroscopy?
3 Answers
Yes, but it's tricky to block the entire knee joint with just local anesthesia, as any local injection into the joint space will be washed out during irrigation required to visualize the joint structures. Multiple nerve blocks can achieve this, but it is much more straight-forward to
undergo a quick general anesthetic.
undergo a quick general anesthetic.
No
Some knee arthroscopic procedures do well under local alone, but some are just too painful.
