As I understand it, the meniscus won’t heal on it’s own. It’s like a flat gasket between the bones that cushions the knee. When it gets injured, the edge flips up – like a curled edge. It’s very painful. The doc trims the edge (the flipped up part). It may or may not grow back. My vet said it would. Other people’s vets say it won’t. The only thing I could find on the internet was about human meniscus which said it would regrow if it had blood supply to the affected area. Not all areas have blood supply. My vet said he could feel the torn meniscus when he examined my dog.

X-rays won’t tell you if there is an injury. It will show other problems, not a torn ACL/CCL, such as arthritis, bone cancer, etc. The x-ray is done to rule out other problems, not to diagnose a tear.

Whatever problems your dog had that made the first tear happen are present in the other leg. It’s statistically probable that the other leg will tear. However, some never do, or sometimes many years later. My dog’s other leg tore almost exactly a year after the first.

I would not do x-rays without symptoms, and maybe not then if you’ve done them before. I don’t know about your area, but here they run $400 to $600 and most docs will want new ones before surgery.

Good luck.

Her doctor was named Dr. Luck. He does NOT have an office but is a roaming vet who works in other Colorado vet clinics who do not have an onsite facility. My vet is named PetsVet in Arvada, CO if anyone wants to talk with them. I felt strange actually never really getting to talk w/ Dr. Luck as all the communication was through my vet. This i did not like but the results are solid. Total cost was under $2k.

Although we followed the rehab instructions to the letter, we had concerns about our dog’s recovery from day one. He developed a large seroma & when we cultured some of the fluid from the seroma, our vet found staph & synovial cells, most likely from leaking joint fluid. When we contacted the surgeon who had done the original Tightrope, he was unable to explain how our dog could be leaking joint fluid.

After the expanding bone tunnel was discovered, we had the fibretape removed. At that time, we were told there was adequate scar tissue built up to stablize the joint. After many more weeks of rehab & becoming increasingly concerned about our dog’s lack of progress, we consulted another ortho surgeon. We were told that his knee was still unstable & would require a TPLO.

After doing the TPLO, we were amazed at the difference in recovery. For a procedure that is supposedly more invasive than the Tightrope, the recovery was like night & day. He used the leg from day one & just got better & better with each passing week. No seroma, no infection, just steady improvement. He also seemed to be in much less pain this time around. Considering it was the 3rd surgery on that knee within a 6 month period, we couldn’t get over how much smoother his recovery went with the TPLO.

Incidentally, the surgeon who did the Tightrope charged us more for the removal than the original Tightrope surgery cost ($2800 vs $2300). He also stopped all follow-up with us the minute the Tightrope was removed. I suspect our complication was never reported in the literature. In fact, we were told the complication was unique to our dog & had never been seen before.

Since that time, I have been in contact with numerous people who experienced similar complications from the Tightrope & who were also told they were the only ones experiencing complications. None of them had any follow-up from the surgeons who had performed the Tightrope. I don’t know how Dr Cook can claim such a low complication rate when it would appear that adequate follow up is not being done with those experiencing the complications? It makes me suspicious that the complication rate numbers are horribly skewed.

I wish with all my heart that we had just done the TPLO from the beginning. We spent over $5K on the Tightrope & removal & ended up having to pay for a TPLO as well. But at the end of the day, it isn’t the loss of money that is most distressing — it is having to watch your beloved dog suffer needlessly.

Also, for $4,000, you should be able to get a TPLO or TTA (my preference of the two high dollar repairs). It’s my opinion that both procedures are too invasive, and I would still choose the LSS. The advantage of those two procedures is that they are healed with little chance of problems after 8 to 10 weeks (once the bone is healed).

Dr. Freiberg is unique in that he doesn’t charge for a follow up surgery if the first oen fails. That’s EXTREMELY unusual. Most all healthcare professionals (DVMs, MDs and DDSs) charge for every procedure whether or not the failure is the failure is their fault.

I would suggest you inform yourself on dog knees. Two Yahoo! groups are dedicated to dog ortho issues – Orthodogs and conservative management.

I would also suggest you stay away from the tightrope procedure. It’s my totally uninformed opinion that some dogs are allergic to the tightrope material