Pain and swelling almost four months later

[pdchottie11]

My boyfriend had a meniscus repair surgery done on December 30 and it is now April 8 and he is still experiencing some pain.  He's been done with therapy for a while now and was told he could return to sports and everything.  He started running for track about two weeks ago and running on the hard ground was bothering him again so he stopped.  When he went to his doctor's appointment on March 30 it was supposed to be his last one but since there was still swelling the doctor said he wanted to see him again in a month.  The doctor also drained the fluid for the second time while he was there making his knee almost the same size as the other one.  This week he went back to running on hard ground and said it barely hurt, only minor pain, but it swelled again.  He went to the school trainer and he told him that he needs to hold back on running for a week to see if the swelling goes down.  I'm really worried now because the trainer (not a doctor just a high school athletics trainer) told him that he might not have healed or something and he might need a minisectimy if the swelling doesn't go down.  He says he feels no where close to as bad as he did when he tore his meniscus in the first place and is barely in pain and the pain only comes when he runs too far (he ran a good 3 miles the other day) and even then it wasn't bad it just swelled so my question is basically, is the swelling normal from his increase in running all the sudden, will it go down, and will he need the surgery?

[sara_eagle]

It could be the repair that is causing the problem- that it didn't heal or he could have some arthritic changes causing the swelling.  What did his dr. say about it?

[pdchottie11]

his first surgery was a repair but today he took some anti-inflamatory medicine and he said within a half hour he was noticing a difference (he never really took any before).  Is it almost a definate that he will need to have the second surgery or could the swelling just be from getting back to running?  when they took the fluid out the other day, it stayed unswollen until he ran 4 miles.

[sara_eagle]

When he had his first surgery, did he have the meniscus repaired or was the tear just debrided (cleaned up)?  If he had a repair, it could be that it didn't heal and if that's the case, he would need another scope to go in, remove the prior repair and, most likely, debride the tear instead of repair it again.  It all depends on what the first surgery entailed and what they find should they go back in again.