Arthroscopic Surgery

Only recently has this type of surgery become widespread, despite the fact it has been around for many years. The Japanese physician Kengi Takagi first described the technique in the early 1930s, although it was not perfected until much later. A student of Takagi, Masaki Watanabe, developed the first arthroscope in the late 1960s. This instrument was first used to view the inside of the knee. In the 1970s, fiber-optic technology became readily available and more surgeons began to use the procedure on the hip and shoulder in addition to the knee. In the 1980s, arthroscopic surgery could be performed on smaller joints such as the ankle. Currently, there are over one million arthroscopic surgeries performed each year in the United States alone. The procedure is most often used in sports medicine.