Arthroscopic wrist ganglia resection

INTRODUCTION: Ganglia, or synovial cysts, are the most common mass -like lesions of the wrist. The treatment is predominantly conservative, but patients with symptomatic lesions or those with aesthetic complaints are candidates for surgical treatment. Open surgery may be challenging due to the proximity to key anatomical structures while arthroscopic resection is a minimally invasive alternative to the open excision. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview based on the recent scientific evidences about arthroscopic resection of wrist ganglia. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: Studies were searched on PubMed, Google Scholar and Web of Knowledge from 2000 to September 2020 and 27 articles discussing arthroscopic treatment of wrist ganglia were included. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: Results discuss age and sex of patients, location of ganglia, whether ganglia were already recurrences at the moment of treatment, outcomes in terms of recurrences, complications, range of motion (ROM), pain before and after the procedure, availability of pre -operative imaging. CONCLUSIONS: Based on this review, we found that ganglia arthroscopic treatment is gaining more consensus through hand surgeons in the years, as a reliable surgical procedure which is safe and with an overall low rate of complications.