• Question: How does keyhole surgery work if your taking out cartilidge tissue in you knee, and how do they see what they are doing?

    Asked by xxonedirectionxx to Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Natalia, Peta on 23 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Andrew Cairns

      Andrew Cairns answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      There is a camera attached to the end of the tiny tiny instrument they insert into your body, along with tiny scissors, suction things, washing things. I don’t really understand how it works, but it is cool!

    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      They insert tiny camera through the hole.

      Nowadays that’s probably a little electronic camera, but they used to use optical fibres. Optical fibres allow light which enters at one end to travel to the other end where you can see it, even if the fibre has lots of bends in it.

      We use optical fibres to carry light in our particle detectors too. We had to check about 10 thousand of them before they were put into the detectors though, so I don’t want to see any more of them!

    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      So in keyhole surgery of the knee they will make a number of different incisions. I had my ACL ligament reconstructed and they had to make 4 holes… 2 holes to drill into the bones, one hole for the little camera to see what was going on and one hole so they could harvest some of my muscle to use to replace the ligament.

      Cartilage is the bit that allows your joint to move smoothly without bone on bone rubbing. Sometimes you can get a tear or a chip in it which needs repair but i think the process would be similar… a hole for each tool they are using.

      If you are having this work done and it makes you feel better to know my knee op didn’t hurt a bit and i was really pleased with the result… knee surgery is pretty good these days. 😀

    • Photo: Hayley Smith

      Hayley Smith answered on 23 Nov 2011:

      The image from the camera is fed through a video screen and magnified so the surgeons can more easily see what’s going on. For some surgeries the surgeons may use robotic instruments, or remotely controlled instruments (using joysticks etc) to help them too. It’s all very fascinating and really excellent what they can do nowadays 🙂

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