Arthroscopy Surgery Specialist
Arthroscopy is a surgical procedure doctors use to look at, diagnose, and treat problems inside a joint.
Your doctor may recommend it if you have inflammation in a joint, have injured a joint, or have damaged a joint over time. You can have arthroscopy on any joint. Most often, it’s done on the knee, shoulder, elbow, ankle, hip, or wrist.
Your doctor will perform arthroscopic surgery in a hospital or outpatient operating room. That means you can go home the same day. The type of anaesthesia you’ll receive is determined by the joint and the problem that your surgeon suspects. It may be general anaesthesia (you’ll be asleep during surgery), or your doctor will give it to you through your spine. They might also numb the area they are performing the surgery on.
Your doctor will insert special, pencil-thin instruments through a small cut (incision) the size of a buttonhole. They’ll use a tool called an arthroscope that has a camera lens and a light. It allows them to see inside the joint. The camera projects an image of the joint onto a screen. The surgeon will fill the joint with sterile fluid to widen it so it’s easier to see.
The arthroscope is a small fiber-optic viewing instrument made up of a tiny lens, a light source and a video camera. The surgical instruments used in arthroscopic surgery are very small (only 3 or 4 mm in diameter), but appear much larger when viewed through an arthroscope.
The television camera attached to the arthroscope displays the image of the joint on a television screen, allowing the surgeon to look, for example, throughout the knee-at cartilage and ligaments, and under the kneecap. The surgeon can determine the amount or type of injury and then do the repair. Usually, this procedure is performed on a patient under spinal or general anesthesia.
Often, arthroscopic surgeries for sports injuries are used in combination with other methods or open surgeries. The most common condition for which arthroscopy surgery is used is to treat tendon tears in the knee. Other conditions include torn ligaments and cartilage, carpal tunnel syndrome, inflammation of the joint lining, tears in the rotator cuffs and loosening of cartilage and bones.
After the surgery, the cut will be sewn shut and dressed neatly. In most cases, patients need almost no pain medication as compared to the medication required to recover from open surgery.
Types of Arthroscopic Surgery
- Knee Arthroscopy
- Shoulder Arthroscopy
- Hip Arthroscopy
- Ankle Arthroscopy
- Elbow Arthroscopy
- Wrist Arthroscopy
