Dr. Armin Tehrany, Orthopedic surgeon of Mount Sinai Hospital, explains arthroscopic shoulder surgery, a relatively new minimally-invasive technique.

Doctor Tehrany: Arthroscopic surgery is like laparoscopic surgery but for the joints. Over the last few years we have developed and gotten close to perfecting a lot of our techniques in shoulder surgery. We started out by doing open surgery for the shoulder. Back in the late 1980's, maybe early 1990's, arthroscopic shoulder surgery came into vogue. Arthroscopic surgery is like laparoscopic surgery but for the joints. Arthro means joint. So the arthroscope is essentially a small camera that we use to help us do open surgery. So the camera is about the size of this pen and what will happen is the arthroscope will be placed through a tiny little key hole in the side of the shoulder, the front of the shoulder, or the back of the shoulder, even the top sometimes. I'll put the arthroscope through the key hole and then this scope is attached to a television screen. I'll just watch the screen as I'm doing the surgery. And using other instruments, pass the instruments through the other key holes. For surgeons that are not comfortable doing the arthroscopic surgery they will start with arthroscopic surgery and then open. But they'll try to keep the open incision small. Open surgery is a big incision, mini open is a smaller incision and arthroscopic is small key hole incision.