Health Spotlight | Minimally invasive is getting smaller
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — This year, millions of people will suffer an injury to one or more of their joints, cartilage, or muscles.
It can happen at any time, whether you’re working out or just from wear and tear over the years.
Minimally invasive surgery has become the gold standard for treating these injuries. But now, minimally invasive is getting even smaller.
50-year-old Jacob Ritting’s favorite part of his day is his five-mile commute to and from work.
“There’s a great bike path that goes nearly from our house along the metro tracks, almost directly to my office,” Ritting said.
But Ritting worried that severe knee pain would derail his ride.
“We had an MRI done and it showed a tear on one side of my knee, but that wasn’t where I was experiencing the most pain,” Ritting said.
MedStar Washington’s orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Evan Argintar, used nano arthroscopy to look inside Ritting’s knee.
“In the office without anesthesia, with him awake, I put this little camera in his knee,” Argintar said.
A normal scope is the size of a pencil eraser, the nano-scope is the size of a pin hole.
“Minimally invasive surgery has evolved even further to be even less invasive than the minimally invasive,” Argintar said.
Argintar was able to see that Ritting had multiple meniscal tears and through another pinhole incision was able to repair the problem.
“He ended up getting it twice, one in the office that discovered a problem that the advanced imaging didn’t identify. And then secondarily, I did it interventional in the operating room and I was, you know, able to, in an ultra-minimally invasive way cure his problem,” Argintar said.
Which should mean less anesthesia, less nerve damage, less recovery time, fewer complications, and less risk of infection.
And less than a month after the procedure, Ritting was pedaling his way to work pain-free.
Argintar believes the nano procures will become the new gold standard and may be used instead of MRI for some patients.
This story was created from a script aired on WISH-TV. Health Spotlight is presented by Community Health Network.