Today’s active lifestyles can ask too much of our knees and shoulders. Problems may happen over time, often from repeated motions, or be caused by a sudden injury. The good news is that arthroscopy can help.

Development of the arthroscope has revolutionized surgical treatment of the knee. With the help of this high tech device, today’s joint problems may be diagnosed and treated without the discomfort of large incisions or the inconvenience of extended hospital stays. And it was NASA that made it all possible.

An arthroscope is an optical instrument connected to a light source. At the end of the instrument is a long metal tube, which is inserted through a tiny incision into the knee, providing the surgeon with a good view of the knee structures. The optics magnify these structures two to two and a half times, creating an image that is conveyed to a TV screen which displays an even larger picture of the knee for the surgeon to observe.

This procedure usually calls for a general or spinal anesthetic to relax the muscles and ligaments of the knee, allowing the joint surfaces to fall apart and creating space into which the arthroscope and the tiny arthroscopic instruments can be passed.

The exact procedure, of course, depends on what damage has occurred to the structures inside the knee, so diagnosis is important. On the various procedures treatable by arthroscopy, the repair of torn knee cartilage is the most common. But numerous other conditions are easily corrected with this state-of-the-art technology. Knee cap problems, loose pieces of detached joint surface (loose bodies), knee ligament repairs and reconstructions, and even some arthritic conditions can be treated with this remarkable little spin off of our space program.