Ankle Arthroscopy
The best advice for treating a bone after an injury is to rest. However, when the injury is to the ankle, it can be difficult to avoid moving it since we depend on the ankle so much for mobility. Ankle pain is often treated with medication or physical therapy, but when these options fail, patients may have to consider surgery as an option. Luckily, surgery is very low risk thanks to new minimally invasive technologies.
Since ankle arthroscopy is minimally invasive, the Specialty Surgical Center team only needs to make a few small incisions. This allows the ankle to heal quicker and makes the recovery time a lot shorter for patients. Arthroscopy simply means that our surgeons will use an arthroscopic camera to help them. This device is very tiny and thin. It goes into the incision and displays a video of the inside of your ankle onto a screen in the operating room. It zooms in on features of the ankle so that our surgeons can see inside without having to cut more incisions to see what they’re doing.
There are three major bones in the ankle, and they can get broken or fractured if the ankle is accidentally rolled or if you jump and land on the ankle with a lot of force. Ankle arthroscopy is not typically used to place the bones back together. Instead, it is used to remove any bits of bone that may have broken off causing discomfort. Similarly, the bone can be shaved down if it grew back irregularly and the bone is putting pressure on the surrounding tissues. Ankle arthroscopy can also heal any tissues or cartilage that have been torn away or damaged.
While patients suffering from arthritis of the ankle may have a similar procedure, the reasoning is very different. In order to repair damaged joints in the ankle, a surgeon must go in to remove tissue if it has become infected. They can also ankle fusion performed to help treat their arthritis pain in a minimally invasive way.
If you have ankle pain and you know that it is not a fracture or arthritis, do not worry. There are a number of other conditions that could require ankle arthroscopy. Just because fractures and arthritis are some of the most common causes, our team physicians are experts at using ankle arthroscopy to treat a variety of conditions including infection, impingement, and more. Ankle arthroscopy is also a great way to diagnose conditions. If patients don’t know the cause of their severe ankle pain, they can come to Specialty Surgical Center to help determine the cause by looking inside the ankle.
Specialty Surgical Center is located in Sparta, New Jersey and our staff consists of board certified surgeons and anesthesiologists performing procedures in Orthopedics, Sports Medicine, Spinal Care, Podiatry, Urology, Pain Management, ENT, Hand Surgery, Lithotripsy, Brachytherapy, GYN and Laser Surgery.
For more information about Specialty Surgical Center, call 973-940-3166 or visit our Contact Page.