An Uncommon Injury Fixed by a Relatively Uncommon Surgery

It was just before Thanksgiving, and Tina Seidel was at a local superstore when she realized that the lady in front of her in the checkout line was leaving because she didn’t have enough money to pay for cat food.

“I ran to catch up to her to let her know I paid, when I heard a pop in my knee,” Seidel recalls.

She had suffered an uncommon injury – a meniscus root tear – and she would need a relatively uncommon surgery to fix it. So she turned to the team at Lehigh Valley Orthopedic Institute.

The meniscus is the cushion in the knee joint. A root tear means that the meniscus has torn away from the tibia, or shin bone, where it is attached, explains Lisa O’Brien, DO, the sports medicine surgeon who repaired Seidel’s knee arthroscopically.

The injury itself is not extremely common, Dr. O’Brien explains, and neither is the surgery to repair it. “Not a lot of these surgeries are done, because root tears make up fewer than 10 percent of all meniscus tears,” Dr. O’Brien says.

“The surgery typically needs to be done within a few months after the injury,” Dr. O’Brien says, “because unless it is repaired, the meniscus is rendered useless which will result in a rapid progression of arthritis.”

Dr. O’Brien performed the minimally invasive procedure using an arthroscope (a small camera) inserted through tiny incisions. She drilled through Seidel’s shin bone to reattach the meniscus tissue to the bone.

“I am so pleased that LVHN has a surgeon like Dr. O’Brien. She’s experienced in this relatively newer surgery and is so forward-thinking.” - Tina Seidel

Thinking back to the day she was injured, Seidel says that at first, she was hoping whatever happened to her knee wasn’t serious. In fact, the day after Thanksgiving, the cycle racer and former speed skater decided to go for a run.

“I made it two minutes down the road and all of a sudden I was in so much pain,” she says. “It was a pain I hadn’t felt before, a horrendous pain. That’s when I knew there was something really wrong.”

In addition to being an athlete, the 58-year-old Seidel is also a savvy consumer of health care. “I wanted to find the best care to be sure that I could remain healthy and independent as I age,” she says.

So after an MRI confirmed her tear, Seidel sought out a sports medicine surgeon in her region of Northeast Pennsylvania who has expertise with the complex surgery she knew she needed.

Not everyone is a candidate for meniscus root repair surgery, Dr. O’Brien explains, because it’s a long recovery period. A patient’s commitment to being compliant during healing is crucial. “I knew Tina was the perfect candidate for this surgery,” Dr. O’Brien says, “given her high pre-injury activity level and her motivation to get back to her normal life.”

It was that motivation, Seidel says, that helped her as she went through six full weeks of putting no weight at all on her leg, and then a few months of additional physical therapy to get better.

Now, her recovery is complete. “I feel good,” she says. “I’m healthy and strong, and there is no pain.”

This past November (2024), Seidel was back in top cycling form, when she and her team won a women’s division triathlon that included a difficult uphill road race.    

“I am so pleased that LVHN has a surgeon like Dr. O’Brien,” says Seidel, a resident of Harding, Luzerne County. “She’s experienced in this relatively newer surgery and is so forward-thinking.”

The compliance director in an organization that provides care services for individuals with disabilities, Seidel was not a regular LVHN patient before seeing Dr. O’Brien. But now, that is changing.

“I’ve switched several of my specialists to LVHN because I’m able to get in so quickly,” she says, and because there are multiple locations that she can choose for care. “They are definitely doing it right in the LVHN health care system.”