Knee arthroscopy in children and adolescents.

We report a series of 77 skeletally immature patients (41 children aged < or = 13 years and 36 adolescents aged 14-16 years) who underwent knee arthroscopy. The purpose of the study was to assess the accuracy of clinical diagnosis and the value of arthroscopy. The correlation between clinical and arthroscopic diagnoses was analyzed in 54 patients. Arthroscopy confirmed the clinical diagnosis in 46.29% (25) of the patients. The accuracy of clinical diagnosis in patients aged 13 years and younger was 31.25%, whereas the accuracy in patients aged from 14 years to 16 years was 68.18%. Paediatric knee arthroscopy is a safe procedure that significantly improves the accuracy of clinical diagnosis, allows the definitive treatment of a variety of conditions and often prevents an unnecessary arthrotomy.