Healthy knees are essential for running and jumping, so any form of knee pain can get in the way of your active lifestyle. The highly skilled team at Northland Orthopedics & Sports Medicine uses knee arthroscopy (scope) to diagnose and treat a wide range of problems at their clinic in Kansas City, Missouri. Call the office or book an appointment online today to find out how a knee scope procedure can help you.
Knee arthroscopy — also called arthroscopic knee surgery, or simply a knee scope — is a minimally invasive technique the team at Northland Orthopedics & Sports Medicine uses to evaluate, diagnose, and treat knee joint problems. This procedure uses a small, tube-like camera (arthroscope) that projects pictures of the inside of your knee onto a screen.
Your Northland Orthopedics & Sports Medicine surgeon inserts the scope into a tiny incision. Unlike open surgery, which uses large incisions that are several inches long, arthroscopy incisions are about the size of a buttonhole.
The scope allows your surgeon to closely examine the tissues of your knee joint without cutting and moving them. If they detect a problem, they may insert miniature surgical tools through one to three additional incisions to perform a treatment.
Knee arthroscopy helps the team at Northland Orthopedics & Sports Medicine diagnose and treat many knee problems. They may recommend knee scoping if you have one of the following conditions:
They may also use a scope to identify the underlying cause of long-lasting knee pain if another procedure, like a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, isn’t possible or doesn’t provide enough information.
The team at Northland Orthopedics & Sports Medicine only performs surgery when the injury is severe or when conservative treatments, such as physical therapy, don’t resolve the problem.
Arthroscopic surgery is minimally invasive, which means less pain and faster recovery for you. Arthroscopy also has a lower risk of complications, such as infection, than open surgery, and the wounds are so small that each one only needs one to two stitches to close. After your wounds heal, your surgeon provides you with a physical therapy regimen.
Your surgeon may perform a knee scoping procedure in-office at Northland Orthopedics & Sports Medicine or a hospital. Most patients go home the same day as there procedure.
Depending on the length of your specific procedure, you may need local, regional, or general anesthesia. Most knee arthroscopy procedures take less than one hour.
We proudly serve the greater Kansas City area. Call Northland Orthopedics & Sports Medicine, or book an appointment online today to learn more about knee scopes.
