Thermal Shrinkage of medial meniscus

[mknoffler]

I had surgery for a torn medial meniscus just over two months ago.  The doctor performed a procedure he called "femoral shrinkage" but which I've also seen referred to as thermal shrinkage in the literature.  His reason for doing this was that the tear was quite small and he felt that resection was quite a drastic move.  The biggest problem, as he described it, was that the meniscus was somewhat "sloppy" (his words) and moved around quite a bit when he probed it.  The shrinkage did help to limit movement.

I've done extensive research online and have talked to a friend who is an orthopedic surgeon and the consensus is that this type of procedure is not very reliable when used on the shoulder or the ACL, which seems to be the typical usage.  I have seen exactly one article about using this procedure, entitled, "Thermal shrinkage of hypermobile lateral meniscus" that reports decent results but only based on a study of 5 patients (as a researcher myself I find this data pool to be a little on the short end).  I've seen nothing else to suggest its been used on the meniscus.  Is my literature search just deficient or is this indeed not a standard procedure?

At this point, the knee definitely feels better than it did pre-surgery, but I am still having distinct pain at the location of the shrinkage.  Squatting, or pulling my leg up behind me definitely causes pain... and running is certainly out.  Even kicking on my back in the pool makes it hurt. Can I expect this pain to go away?  Could I potentially stretch the meniscus back out?  Any thoughts?  Thanks in advance.