Several top pro athletes and their surgeons say a modern version of an old tool is shaving weeks off the recovery time for certain injuries. And some top doctors think this is only the beginning.
Cy Young Award winners Tarik Skubal and Blake Snell let doctors use the instrument on their prized elbows. Connor Hellebuyck, the 2025 Hart Trophy winner as NHL MVP, trusted it to address issues in his knee. Several NFL players have turned to it, too.
It's called the NanoNeedle scope 2.0, a miniaturized, flexible version of the traditional arthroscope. It's very early -- there is little published research on the model -- but it is accumulating an impressive list of proponents.
"Every time I've used it, including when I started using it in the lab, different types of procedures occur to me that we could do," said Neal ElAttrache, MD, the head team physician for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Rams.
An arthroscope is a pencil-like tube with a camera that goes into joints, expands the area with salt water or saline, and projects an image onto a screen. Then doctors insert secondary instruments in the same area to perform the surgical procedure.
