Arthroscopic Arthroplasty for Knee Osteoarthritis: Denervation of Subchondral Bone and Comprehensive Synovectomy

Knee osteoarthritis is the most common orthopaedic disorder, and surgical treatments are always inevitable. Among the various surgical options, arthroscopic treatment is not favorable because strong evidence supporting its application is scarce. However, we consider that the unsatisfactory clinical results of arthroscopic surgery occur because the pain-relieving mechanism of joint replacement is not realized in the too simple and not well-designed arthroscopic procedures. Thus, we use a set of arthroscopic procedures to realize the pain-relieving mechanism of joint replacement, which we call “arthroscopic arthroplasty.” The most important parts of this technique are denervation of the subchondral bone and comprehensive synovectomy. Our clinical results indicate that we can obtain even better functional improvement with this technique than that with joint replacement. We consider that the introduction of this technique will arouse interest in the development of arthroscopic surgical procedures for knee osteoarthritis.