Arthroscopic synovectomy in the treatment of haemophilic arthropathy: preliminary results in eight patients.

Synovectomy is a procedure which is widely used in the surgical treatment of haemophilic arthropathy: the short and long-term results have in fact sufficiently shown its effectiveness in the reduction of the number of cases of haemarthrosis. This operation, however, has the disadvantage of a reduction in joint mobility which may vary from 25% to 77%, depending on the various case series reported (Post et al., 1986; Clark, 1978; McCollough et al., 1979; Montane et al., 1986). This complication moreover, is common to all synovectomy operations, even those which are performed for synovial affections of a different nature. As the advantages of arthroscopic synovectomy as compared to open surgery are commonly known, it was decided to extend the indication to haemophilic arthropathy (Wiedel, 1985; Klein et al., 1987). The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of arthroscopic synovectomy in 8 patients with type A haemophilia affected with severe arthropathy consequent to repeated haemarthrosis and with marked hypertrophic synovial tissue.