Fortis Doctor removes world's largest floating loose body from knee joint of 77-year-old patient

New Delhi: An orthopaedic surgeon at the Fortis Escorts hospital in the national capital claimed he operated on the largest loose body floating in the knee of a 77-year-old individual.

According to Dr Kaushal Kant Mishra, the 'loose body' was floating in the body of the patient for 35-40 years. 

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"This is a normal case in osteoarthritis of the knee where the patient himself is a 77-year-old doctor. He laid history by suffering from some loose body floating in the knee joint for the last 35 to 40 years. This loose body was floating in his knee and the size of a loose body, as available to everyone including the Medical literature PubMed and is approximately 5x2x1cm, but in this case, it was around three times larger than the size of the kneecap and measured around 6.5x5x3cm," Dr Kaushal said.

"If you consider its weight, then it too is almost equal to the knee joint itself. Hence, the size of the operated loose body is almost 60 to 70 per cent of the total size of the knee and it is almost three times the size of the kneecap," Dr Kaushal explained further by showing the X-ray image of the loose body.

"So, on the documents, it is the largest body found ever in the world," he added.

He further, compared the loose body in the knee joint with a pearl in the sea and said the reason behind it was a "minor trauma in which some bone part was floating in the knee joint and on which the deposition started, exactly like the development of a pearl in the sea."

He also said that there are certain diseases and health conditions where multiple loose bodies are formed. "It is very common in almost 20 to 30 per cent of the old-age patients to have such loose bodies. It is a normal degenerative process, but in this particular case, the body remained there for almost 35 to 40 years as per the patient himself. He is a doctor so we should believe him," he added.

"This is an isolated single largest body which is uncommon to be found in the knees as a rare phenomenon. But finding multiple loose bodies, in numbers like 10 or more in small sizes is very common," Dr Kaushal added.

When asked about the use of such loose bodies in bone drafting, he said, "There is a certain area in the bone which is white and another area which is like a pale yellow. This pale yellow part is basically the bone and white-creamish area is the cartilage."

This cartilage (of the loose body) can further be used for cartilage transplant in some patients, he added.

Dr V P Pandey, 77, who was operated on for the removal of this loose body in his knee joint said, "I am a retired CMO and still working on some projects. It was a smaller size loose body earlier but slowly developed to a large size due to my ignorance."

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