Orthopedic surgeon gives insight on recent procedure on Vikings QB J.J. McCarthy's knee

It's important for the Vikings to publically say that McCarthy is going to be okay and also intriguing to say that his timeline of recovery hasn't changed despite the procedure. 

There are a lot of open-ended elements of this topic so I spoke with orthopedic surgeon Scott Arthur M.D. at the Bone and Joint Institute of Tennessee to understand a little bit more about why McCarthy could have needed this and what it potentially means for him. 

What are some of the things you are looking for with swelling? How concerning is it for you as a surgeon?

"Swelling is when your knee is irritated or inflamed from recovery, distress or rehab. Sometimes, your knee gets irritated and it makes more fluid than normal. When there is swelling, the surgeon may want to check out the repair to make sure everything is healing properly. It can be hard to evaluate at times with the MRI, so you can confirm that everything's healing appropriately (with a procedure). Sometimes you can have a little flap of the meniscus or one of the little stitches could be irritating and that may need a little cleanup. This can be pretty minor, but what you're doing is assessing the repair and making sure everything's healing well, and then secondarily, cleaning up anything that could be irritating the knee"

When you look at the knee, what does that look like? Do you need to put the patient under with anesthetic?

The Minnesota Star Tribune's Ben Goessling reported that the procedure that McCarthy had done before the injection did involve an incision, which likely means some form of knee scope. Dr. Arthur talked about a couple of different options they could use.

"A lot of the time, traditionally, we've always gone to sleep with general anesthesia, but it could occasionally be done with a spinal block or local anesthesia. I am not his orthopedic surgeon, so I don't know if they'll be using this or not, but there's a little nanoscope where you can go inside of the knee. It's got a little small kind of needle that has a scope on the end of it and with those, you can inflate the knee with some fluid and numbing medicine to take a look inside and do a little cleanup. It's possible you could do it with a local, but it's not uncommon that you would just go to sleep for that kind of surgery."

The biological injection that was reported was platelet-rich plasma. What does that do for the knee and healing process?

"Platelet-rich plasma is taking your blood and spinning it down to separate the plasma from the red blood cells. There are growth factors on the platelets and you're infusing that into the knee. When you have a swollen knee after surgery, that knee environment is inflamed and it's not really healthy to the joint. By injecting the platelet rich plasma, you're trying to reset that fluid into more nourishing, healthy growth factors that are healthy for the cartilage for healing and recovery."

Can something like this be a setback to McCarthy's rehab process and return timeline?

It's important to note that Dr. Arthur has not seen McCarthy and is going off of his experience dealing with these kinds of injuries in his career.

"I really wouldn't expect it to. You're always evaluating the success of the repair, but this (McCarthy's situation) sounds pretty minor. He should bounce back a few weeks from the actual procedure, so I would not expect this to knock McCarthy backward big time in his rehab. He will probably do a reset for three or four weeks to get the inflammation down before starting impact loading with activities like running and jumping."

Based on the information we have at our disposal, Dr. Arthur doesn't believe there is much to worry about with McCarthy's knee. That tracks with everything we've heard from the organization so far about the situation with McCarthy's knee.

Could more complications be unforeseen? It's a possibility with any healing process, but as things sit right now, there shouldn't be any concern moving forward with McCarthy.