When the ankle fracture is unstable or in bad position, surgery is needed to repair the ankle. In some cases, the bones of the ankle may poke through the skin. These are called open ankle fractures and require surgery.

The arthroscope has been around for a long time, and it’s been used successfully in the shoulder and the knee for many years. And it’s an instrument that allows surgeons to see inside the joint and project an image onto a TV screen so they can see what they’re doing, and they get a much better view of the joint on the TV screen than they’d ever get trying to look in the joint after making a large incision and looking through retractors holding the skin and soft tissue apart.