It was the season-ending hit felt around the NFL. Week 2 of the 2023 season in Pittsburgh — 207-pound Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick tries to stop the freight train of Browns running back Nick Chubb with a low tackle. The result? A devastating knee injury that would sideline Chubb for rest of the year.

It wasn’t the first time Chubb had been through this: He had a similar knee injury during his sophomore year at Georgia. He knew what he faced, he knew what recovery and rehabilitation would be like, he knew the risks.

Moments after the hit, Browns team doctor James Voos, M.D., University Hospitals Chair of Orthopedic Surgery and now president of the NFL Physicians Society, was among the first on the field. He knew repairing Chubb’s knee would be in his hands.

“The challenge of this injury is that it’s a second time to suffer a significant knee injury,” Voos explained to 3News of how he clearly understood how high the stakes were. “So taking into the consideration of a prior surgery, a significant new injury, and then the desire to get back to performing at a very high level.”

But Voos also knew that a lot had changed in the eight years between the injuries, and everything definitely worked in the running back’s favor. The science, surgical equipment, and techniques are significantly better.

“The NanoScope is a very small, pinhole-type camera that allowed us during his first surgery to confirm the diagnosis of the type of ligament injury he had,” Voos said. “It also allowed us to work around the knee with very small incisions and minimal trauma to the tissue.”

Voos added that those smaller incisions would lead to less scar tissue and faster recovery, not to mention the imaging on the camera has improved tenfold, helping the surgical team build a plan.

Read the full story at WKYC here.