title: Arthroscopical removal of a projectile from the intra-articular cavity of the knee joint.
abstract: We report the case of a 29-year-old patient with an uncommon handgun accident. A gun was resting in his pocket when an accidental shot was fired. The projectile penetrated the skin of the thigh, travelled through the quadriceps muscle and entered the articular cavity at the upper pole of the suprapatellar recess. It passed the femoropatellar joint space and stopped within the infra-articular fad pad. The bullet was localized by conventional X-rays and removed by arthroscopy. The patient developed no infection, and in a clinical follow-up examination 6 months postoperatively, we observed no pathological findings.
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Christian Albrechts University Kiel, Michaelisstr. 1, 24105 Kiel, Germany. wolfpetersen@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Wolf
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Petersen
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Beske
authors.forename: Volker
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Stein
authors.forename: Heinz
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Laprell
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001182:Arthroscopy; D005547:Foreign Bodies / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D007719:Knee Joint; D008297:Male; D014948:Wounds, Gunshot / Q000601:surgery*