How to Know If You Have an ACL Tear
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When Is It Time to Consider Elbow Arthroscopy?
Trying to get through even the simplest tasks with a painful elbow can be challenging. From picking up a grocery bag to turning a doorknob — damaged elbows have a way of making themselves known.
If you’ve been struggling with elbow pain and you want to review your options, we've certainly got you covered. Our own board-certified orthopedic surgeon Dr. William Schell has a good deal of experience helping patients find relief from elbow pain, often through arthroscopy.
In the following, we take a look at whether you might benefit from elbow arthroscopy and what it entails.
A pain in the elbow
Many roads lead to elbow pain, but some are more well-traveled than others. The most common drivers of elbow pain are soft tissue problems, especially those involving ligaments, tendons, and cartilage. More specifically, most of what we see here at our practice includes:
- Osteoarthritis in the elbow
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis), which has an annual incidence rate of 1-3%
- Ulnar collateral ligament damage
Though not a soft tissue problem, fractures should be included on this list.
Most of these injuries are overuse or degenerative issues, which develop over time and often continue to degrade unless we take action.
Arthroscopy for diagnosis and treatment
The main reason why elbow arthroscopy is such a workhorse at our practice is because it serves as both a diagnostic tool and a treatment protocol.
For diagnosis, we typically use digital imaging and symptom assessment to start, but these have limitations since we’re not visualizing the inside of your elbow joint properly.
If imaging isn’t sufficient, we often turn to arthroscopy, which is a technique in which we make only small incisions and use a special camera that we thread into your elbow to provide us with high-definition, real-time images of the internal structures. With this “first-hand” look, we can properly identify what’s causing your pain.
But we don’t stop there. The beauty of arthroscopy is that we can keep the camera in place and then thread instruments through to repair soft tissues or remove loose bodies in the joint. These instruments translate the movements of Dr. Schell’s hands in much smaller spaces, which minimizes the collateral damage that’s often associated with open surgery.
As a result, the elbow arthroscopy journey is much faster and less risky than an open surgery.
Good candidates for arthroscopy
If you’re wondering whether you might benefit from elbow arthroscopy, here are some points to consider.
Elbow arthroscopy is a great tool if:
- Conservative treatments aren’t working
- Your pain is moderate to severe
- The condition is getting worse, such as arthritis
- You have loose bodies in your elbow (usually pieces of broken down cartilage)
- You rely on a functioning elbow for work or activity
We also want to point out that elbow arthroscopy is often more challenging than other joints because of important nerves in the area that we need to work around. Dr. Schell understands this and takes great care to preserve your nerves while repairing and improving the joint.
The best way to determine a good course of action for relieving your elbow pain and restoring function is to come in and sit down with Dr. Schell for an evaluation.
To get started, you can contact us at our New York City office — located on Columbus Circle on the Upper West Side — by calling 646-381-2646. You can also send us a message by clicking here.
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