Venturing Inside the Body: Transformative Experiences of Pain, Anatomy and Age among Danish Patients Undergoing Awake Arthroscopic Surgery

ABSTRACT

When patients who undergo awake arthroscopic surgery follow the surgery on a screen, medical image technologies enable a rare look inside one’s own body. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at an orthopedic surgery unit in Denmark, we investigate how patients experience their bodies during surgery. Patients see surgery as proof of their pain, experience an anatomical re-categorization, and contemplate the decay of the aging body. We argue that awake arthroscopic surgery constitutes a liminal setting transforming patients’ perceptions of their body and their sufferings. Furthermore, we discuss how awake arthroscopic surgery can be understood as a frame for producing new realities. It constitutes a particular way of seeing and understanding that highlights the seductiveness of the visual as an objective carrier of truth and reminds us to remain critical toward the power of certain frames of knowledge production in medical settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Ageing
• anatomy
• Denmark
• medical images
• pain
• patient experience
• surgery

Acknowledgment

We are beyond grateful to the patients and surgeons from the orthopedic unit - without their participation and willingness to share their experiences with surgery, this project would have been impossible. We would also like to thank our colleagues at the Copenhagen Center for Medical Science and Technology Studies (MeST), especially Mette Nordahl Svendsen, and our colleagues at Medical Museion for letting us share our work with them, and for providing thoughtful comments and suggestions. Also, a thank to Helene Scott-Fordsmand for the many constructive discussions. Finally, we would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers, as well as the editors, for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Arthroscopic surgery is also offered by private hospitals in Denmark. At the private hospitals patients pay for the surgery, unless they are referred to it from a public health provider or have an insurance that covers the costs.

2. Our research follows the rules of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the Danish Data Protection Agency. According to Danish law, a qualitative study like this, with no patient records or biological samples, does not need approval from the Scientific Committee of Ethics.

3. The gender difference among patients in elective orthopedic surgery is highly interesting, and we encourage further studies into causes and differences of their experiences in relation to this.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Simone Grytter

Simone Grytter is a PhD Fellow at Medical Museion, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has a background in Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths University of London, and in European Ethnology from the University of Copenhagen. Her current research focus is on the use of imaging technologies in health care, and how these influences understandings of the body. She works between the clinical space and the museum space. She also currently holds a position as curator of Appendix at Medical Museion and CBMR

Anja M. B. Jensen

Anja M.B. Jensen is associate professor of medical anthropology and co-director of the Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies at the Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on intersections of medical technology, public policy, ethics in clinical practice, and patient and family care. Her current project TechnEmotion focuses on the interaction of technology and emotion in innovative transplant medicine and is funded by a Sapere Aude grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.