Shoulder Arthroscopy
Arthroscopy describes the surgical procedure where a fiber-optic device is used to visualize joints via small punctures or ‘portals’. Arthroscopy allows the Orthopedic Surgeon to treat an array of joint disorders with minimal soft tissue violation. The use of the arthroscope was initially devoted to afflictions of the knee. As surgeons gained proficiency in treating the knee, other joints were explored with the ‘scope’. Shoulder arthroscopy has gained much attention in the past decade since, as surgeons gain more and more experience with visualizing this joint arthroscopically, more and more applications have evolved. Today, your Orthopedic Surgeon can use Arthroscopic surgery to successfully treat shoulder instability, disorders of the rotator cuff, arthritis, throwing injuries and shoulder stiffness.
During Arthroscopy, your surgeon will insert the arthroscope in to the shoulder in order to assess the joint and determine what is wrong. You may receive a nerve block with or without general anesthesia. Most cases of arthroscopy of the shoulder are performed in less than two hours. After arthroscopic surgery of the shoulder, you will likely wear a sling for comfort and be allowed to return home the same day as surgery.
The two most common applications of shoulder arthroscopy are treatment of shoulder instability and rotator cuff disorders. Shoulder instability describes the condition where the shoulder joint is ‘unstable’ and does not remain ‘contained’ in its native resting position. Most instability is anterior, whereupon the shoulder joint will ‘slip out’ in the frontal direction. To remedy this, arthroscopy affords the surgeon the ability to repair damaged and/or stretched tissue in the front of the joint. The surgeon will observe the damaged area using one puncture, or portal, while employing another portal to perform the repair.
The rotator cuff is four confluent muscle tendon units that may be injured with trauma or overuse. The supraspinatus tendon is more commonly injured than the other cuff tendons . Rotator cuff disorders range from tendonitis, whereupon a tendon sustains subtle injury secondary to excessive demand, to full thickness tears of a tendon near its’ insertion to bone. Shoulder arthroscopy enables the Orthopedic surgeon to remove bone spurs which may be irritating the cuff tendon with minimal invasiveness. Furthermore, shoulder arthroscopy permits the surgeon to repair both small and large rotator cuff tears without large incisions.
Shoulder arthroscopy is being used more and more by Orthopedic surgeons since it has a proven track record of helping many patients in a manner that is clearly less painful than previous ‘open’ surgery. |
