Acute Knee Clinic

This is a service where we aim to see patients urgently after an injury.

This clinic is for urgent assessment of patients who may require urgent surgery.

The current referral pathway is through your GP, who can make an urgent referral.

There are strict referral criteria to ensure that the most appropriate patients are seen as quickly as possible.

Patients suitable for this service include:

Significant recent trauma with suspected:

Ligament rupture

Meniscal tear

Osteochondral damage

These patients are likely to present with mechanical symptoms such as a locked knee or

true episodes of locking or giving way. such injuries may also result in significant haemarthrosis or effusion.

Emergency Referrals:

If there is a suspected knee fracture, tendon rupture or infection these should be referred immediately to the Emergency Department.

There are certain groups of patients that are not suitable for this clinic:

No history of significant trauma, particularly in older patients.

There is good evidence that symptoms from meniscal tears in older patients often resolve without surgery.

Conservative treatment including physiotherapy, analgesia and advice on activity modification is often successful.

Patients with longstanding knee pain are not suitable patients for this clinic.

Patients with established arthritis should be referred for physiotherapy first as their symptoms often improve with time.

Providing advice, treatment and surgery for all conditions of the knee