Signs Your Shoulder Pain Needs Help
Shoulder pain isn’t uncommon, but how do you know when to see your doctor? Here’s what you need to know.
If you have an injured joint, our team of orthopedic surgeons at Crescent City Orthopedics offers arthroscopy, a minimally invasive procedure that can repair your injury, help you heal quickly, and offer many other benefits.
We use arthroscopy to treat:
Arthroscopy can treat inflamed tissues surrounding your knee, shoulder, wrist, elbow, or ankle joint.
They include:
In some cases, we can also treat problems associated with arthritis arthroscopically.
To perform an arthroscopic procedure, we make a small incision in your skin and insert a pencil-sized medical instrument that has a lens and a light on the end of it, giving us the ability to see inside your joint.
The camera shows real-time images of your joint that we look at on a video monitor. We’re able to determine the extent of your injury and repair it. A repair might require a second small incision.
Arthroscopy can serve as a much-preferred method of treatment as opposed to traditional open surgery for several reasons.
When performing open surgery, we have to make at least one large incision. This type of surgery can be beneficial when needing to have the area be wide open.
Although arthroscopy has its many benefits, we may need to perform open surgery if there is a severe amount of damage to your joint or if your organs and tissues are large, requiring large prosthetic instruments to be inserted into your joint.
Arthroscopic procedures offer many advantages when comparing to open surgery, including:
Arthroscopy only requires tiny incisions, which means you bleed very little. The need for a blood transfusion during your procedure isn’t likely.
Small incisions leave you with small scars. When you have large incisions with open surgery, your scars are much more noticeable.
Arthroscopy is minimally invasive, which typically means you can have your procedure done on an outpatient basis. Because you only have a few small incisions, you don’t need a great deal of time to recover. Open surgery usually requires at least one overnight stay in the hospital because of the more invasive procedure.
Minimally invasive surgery requires less exposure to germs and bacteria, which can decrease your risk of infection.
If arthroscopy is a viable option to treat your condition, our team chooses the minimally invasive route. During your consultation, we can determine if you’re a candidate for arthroscopy.
If you think you might be a candidate for arthroscopy, contact our team today. Call the office nearest you in Metairie, Chalmette, or Covington, Louisiana, or use the online booking tool. If you’re not able to come into our office, we can set up a telemedicine appointment for you.
