When you suffer from joint pain, you can experience more than just physical discomfort. The pain can also keep you from what you need or love to do as you enjoy a full life.
At Big Bend Regional Medical Center, we offer the care you need to help you get back on track. This care sometimes includes minimally invasive arthroscopic surgery to treat a variety of hip, knee and shoulder conditions. Originally, arthroscopy was simply a diagnostic tool for planning standard open surgery. Now, with the development of better instruments and surgical techniques, many joint conditions can be treated arthroscopically.
Arthroscopic specialists are trained in techniques requiring just a few small incisions. During arthroscopy, an orthopedic specialist uses a pencil-size instrument to look inside the joint. The arthroscope, a fiber optic camera, is so slim that it can be inserted into the joint through one or more tiny incisions in the skin. A majority of arthroscopic procedures involve the knee and shoulder as they are larger joints. Most procedures are done to repair tears in tendons or clean out cartilage within the joint. Be sure to talk to your orthopedic specialist about the details of what will happen during the procedure and what kind of results can be expected.
Because the procedure is less invasive, meaning less cutting and trauma to your body, the recovery is generally much shorter and easier than traditional surgery.