Presenting in Taiwan
Dr Christopher Child presented at the Academic Congress of the Asian Shoulder and Elbow Association in Taiwan. His talk compared glenoid component positioning in total shoulder arthroplasty against reverse shoulder arthroplasty.
The two operations place the socket component differently, and quantifying that difference is directly useful at the planning stage. This line of work is also covered in our post on glenoid component position research.
What the Asian Shoulder and Elbow Association congress is
The Asian Shoulder and Elbow Association brings together surgeons across Asia whose practice concentrates on the shoulder and elbow, and its academic congress is the regional meeting at which they present research to each other. Regional subspecialty meetings sit between a national society meeting and a world congress, and they are where work gets its first serious questioning from people who perform the same operations.
Presenting at a meeting like this is also a standard part of fellowship and research training. Preparing a paper for an audience of surgeons who will ask how the measurements were taken, and whether the conclusion follows from them, is a different exercise from writing it up, and it generally improves the study before it is submitted for publication.
The glenoid component and why its position is measured
The glenoid is the socket side of the shoulder joint, a shallow dish on the outer edge of the shoulder blade. In a shoulder replacement, a component is fixed to it. In an anatomic total shoulder replacement that component is a socket, matching the natural arrangement. In a reverse replacement it is a ball, because the geometry of the joint is turned around so that the deltoid muscle can lift the arm when the rotator cuff cannot.
Because the two operations put different things on the glenoid, and load it in different directions, the position that works best is not the same for each. Position here means several measurements at once: how far the component sits in or out from the bone, how it is tilted up or down, and how it is rotated front to back. Those few millimetres and degrees influence how the shoulder moves afterwards and how the component is loaded over time, which is why planning is now commonly done on a CT scan before the operation. Measuring how the two operations differ gives surgeons numbers to plan against rather than impressions. Individual results vary.
Related information
- Our post on the difference between ATSR and RTSR.
- Our post on Dr Wu Kang presenting at the same congress.
- The anatomic total shoulder replacement page.
- The reverse total shoulder replacement page.