A three-day masterclass
On the faculty of a three-day shoulder arthroscopy masterclass in Kathmandu, Nepal. Faculty came from India, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Courses of this kind combine lectures with practical sessions and live surgery over consecutive days, which allows a technique to be taught from the principles through to the handling, rather than described in isolation.
With thanks to the organising committee.
Shoulder arthroscopy, in plain terms
Arthroscopy means looking inside a joint with a camera. A small telescope, a few millimetres across, is passed into the shoulder through a short incision, and the image is displayed on a screen. Further small incisions, called portals, allow instruments to be passed in alongside it. Fluid is run through the joint to keep the view clear and the space open.
Working this way, a surgeon can repair a torn rotator cuff tendon back to the bone, reattach a torn labrum to the rim of the socket with small anchors, release the tight capsule of a frozen shoulder, remove inflamed bursal tissue, and in experienced hands carry out bone block procedures such as a Latarjet. The attraction is that the muscles over the shoulder are not divided to reach the joint. The difficulty is that everything is done at the end of long instruments while watching a two dimensional screen, which takes considerable practice to learn. Individual results vary.
How a masterclass is structured
A three-day course is built in layers. Lectures set out the principles, the indications and the evidence. Practical sessions give each delegate time at a station with the instruments in their hands, working on models or specimens, where a mistake costs nothing. Live surgery then shows the whole operation performed in sequence on a real patient, with the audience able to ask why each step was taken as it happens.
Running those formats over consecutive days rather than separately is deliberate. A delegate who has heard the principles in the morning, handled the instruments in the afternoon and then watched the case the following day has had the same material presented three different ways, which is a far more reliable way of learning a manual skill than any one of them alone. Faculty drawn from several countries also means delegates hear more than one way of doing the same operation, which matters when they return to theatres with different equipment available.
Related information
- Our post on the international faculty in Kathmandu.
- Our post on the Brisbane Shoulder Fellowship in Kathmandu.
- Our post on live surgery in Kathmandu.
- The shoulder surgery page covers the procedures taught.