Withi the past six years we had 4 patients with spontaneous hemarthrosis of the knee. The average age of our patients was 63 years. Two of them were men and two were women. They had no history of trauma or bleeding tendency. But two of them had a history of hypertention and two patients had experienced arthritic pains in the knee for some years.
X-ray examination showed arthritic changes behind the patella and narrowing the femor-tibia space. Arthroscopically, the articular cartilage of the femoral condyle was defaced and subchondral bone was exposed. It has been suggested that hemarthrosis is due to scraping of the subchondral bone.
In two of our cases the lower limb was immobilized on a gyps for a week and then mobilized. One case with medial compartmental arthritis treated by wedged insole. And one case which had torn meniscus we did menisectomy. After the treatment, hemarthrosis had not occurred in all cases.
