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Saturday, June 2, 2012

Wrist Arthroscopy at Kauvery Hospital Trichy in an young fit Defence Personnel

Technology has been rapidly catching up with our lives or one can say that our life has recently been spent catching up with the technology.

One should read the History of 20th century and especially the last twenty years of this century where great strides have been made in the technological revolution.

A Short History of the Twentieth Century

Medicine has been rather slow in catching up, but boy has it not caught up with it! Radiology, interventional, optics in scopy, computers in navigating surgery and robotics and so on and so forth.

The subject of this blog is arthroscopy which is a technique of viewing the inside of the joint to diagnose and more importantly to treat the joint ailments. Knees and shoulders are now optimally treated with arthroscopic techniques details of which we can go into another day.

The lesser known joints where this technique is useful are the wrists, elbows and ankles. A national security cadet had a wrist injury which caused him to be limited in his use of his left wrist and hand. he was unable to open a bottle by screwing the cap out. Of course he was not able to use the rifle which is essential in his line of duty.

The Magnetic resonance Imaging which shows the soft tissues well was performed on his wrist. this showed a torn cartilage. As you know the X rays which are used show only the bones. Majority of joint problems are to do with the cartilage and the ligaments which do not show on the X rays.

The availability of the technique of arthroscopy enabled us to look into his wrist without cutting it open and confirm the torn cartilage. The technology also allows us to repair the cartilage and in six weeks he was a happy person able to use his wrist as normal.

Now when i started training in Orthopaedics, we were excited to see the inside of the knee with a telescope, let alone do something inside. At present, "the advent of fibreoptics, high definition camera, power instruments and coablation techniques helping us to treat patients like this cadet in a second tier city in India" is remarkable.

Hats off to the Technology and Kudos to Kauvery Hospital in providing the technology to the people of Trichy and the surrounding Districts!

Best wishes

Chockalingam