Hi all,
I had anterior knee surgery (chondroplasty underneath patella, cleaning up of fat pad) on my right knee about 10 months ago, and have not been able to gain back the last 5 degrees of extension.  I can get my leg to 0 degrees, but can't get back that 5 degrees of hyperextension that I had before the surgery.  Do you think this is concerning?  It makes my leg really a bit funny when walking, but does not cause pain.

I have the same anterior knee issues in my other (left) knee, and have had bad pain now for almost a year.  So I am about to make the leap and get the same surgery in my left knee.  I have to admit that I feel so scared about going through this again.  It was much easier the first time, not knowing how hard rehab is.  Deciding to do it a second time feels like a much harder decision.  But I have done everything I can possibly think of (rehab, cortisone, viscosupplementation) and nothing is working. 

Having lost a bit of extension in my operated leg makes it a bit harder to decided about surgery on the other leg.  I don't want to lose my extension in the other leg as well.  However, I don't want to keep living in pain either. 

Any advice would be appreciated about the slight loss of extension, and if it is a big concern would be helpful as I decide whether to get surgery on my other knee. 

Thanks for your response. The feedback I have gotten so far is just to live with the lack of extension since I can at least get my leg to 0 degrees actively.  However, I am going to go see my PT soon after not having been there for a while so I will ask again.  My knee does extend all the way (to 5 degrees hyperextension) passively.  So I can get it into hyperextension by looping a strap around the end of my foot and pulling up. 

However, when I try to actively extend my leg using my muscles, I cannot get it into hyperextension at all.  It feels like a very big difference between what I can do actively, and what I can get the leg into passively.  Also, ever since the operation my knee has always felt "heavy" and like there is some "gook" in there, so I have been told there is probably a bit of arthrofibrosis in there contributing to all this.  But I don't think there is a whole lot because I don't experience sharp pain when extending or anything like that.

It is such a dilemma about my other knee.  I hate living with this pain in the other knee, but I also don't want to lose my extension in my other knee if I do get surgery.