Today I spent some time in front of the television while I was waiting for my food to arrive. I flicked through several channels before stopping on a documentary about arm surgeries. It was a very specific topic but since I had nothing else to watch I decided to sit down and watch it. Most of the footage showed the different injuries and procedures that are related to your arms.
At the time I started watching the documentary, they were showing this procedure called a distal biceps tendon repair. Melbourne surgeons say that you usually get this procedure if the tendon at your elbow ruptures as a result of a strong contraction of the biceps muscle. It was a bit confusing to me, so I was glad that the documentary showed diagrams and got people who had received the procedure to explain what happened. This sort of injury generally occurs in men over 35, and in people who are bodybuilders or if they are doing a really physical manual labour job.
What I also learned by watching the documentary is that with this sort of tendon tear, if you don’t get it seen to within about three weeks, surgery can become difficult or impossible. This is why it’s apparently important not to ignore arm pain or overdo things like ice packs and rest as nonsurgical treatments.
The documentary also showed an elbow arthroscopy, which is a procedure that surgeons use to actually look at what is inside a joint and diagnose any problems with it. The way it happens is that a surgeon puts a small camera into the joint and the images that the camera takes appear on a television screen. These images are then what the surgeon uses to guide the medical instruments through the joint during the procedure. The procedure sounds a little bit intense, and the way the documentary showed it was very informative. I’m sure it is a very important procedure for many people with bicep and elbow injuries.