Accepted for publication
"Arthroscopic Latarjet Stabilisation of the Shoulder with Capsulolabral Repair" has been accepted by the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery for its techniques section. The article was submitted in February 2015 and accepted in March 2015.
What acceptance by a journal means
An article is not published simply because it has been sent to a journal. It is assessed by the editors and then sent out to reviewers, usually surgeons working in the same field, who read it critically and recommend acceptance, revision or rejection. Acceptance means the journal has satisfied itself that the work is sound and worth putting on the record, which is why both dates are worth noting. The Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery is a specialist journal in this field, and its techniques section carries articles whose purpose is to set out, step by step, how an operation is performed, so that other surgeons can follow it.
What the Latarjet procedure is
The shoulder is a shallow ball and socket joint, which is what gives it such a wide range of movement and also what makes it the joint most likely to dislocate. Where a shoulder dislocates repeatedly, the front rim of the socket and the labrum, the ring of cartilage around that rim, are often damaged, and in some cases bone has been lost from the rim itself. A Latarjet procedure moves a small block of bone from the coracoid, a nearby projection of the shoulder blade, around to the front of the socket, where it is fixed with screws. This deepens the socket, and the tendons still attached to the transferred bone add a further restraint across the front of the joint. Individual results vary.
What it describes
The article describes combining labral and capsular repair with an arthroscopic Latarjet procedure, and reports a series of 22 cases.
The reasoning behind the modification
Three points are made in favour of the approach:
- Repairing the capsule and labrum adds to the strength of the reconstruction.
- Preserving the capsule leaves the transferred bone block in an extracapsular position, outside the joint.
- The combination is of use in complex instability, where a soft tissue repair or a bone block alone may not be sufficient.
These are the technical rationale for the modification. This was a technique article reporting a case series, and it does not present comparative outcome data against other approaches. Individual results vary.
Related information
- Our post on the Latarjet and labral repair publication
- Our shoulder instability page
- Our post on Latarjet stabilisation
- Our Latarjet and labral repair page