Two days in theatre
Dr Richard Large, of Mornington Orthopaedics in Victoria, visited in August 2015 to observe arthroscopic Latarjet procedures. The two surgeons spent two days in the operating theatre performing these procedures together.
Two consecutive days allows a visiting surgeon to see the technique more than once, which is considerably more useful than a single case.
What the arthroscopic Latarjet is
The Latarjet is an operation for shoulder instability, generally used where a shoulder has dislocated repeatedly and bone has been lost from the front of the socket. A small piece of bone from the shoulder blade, the coracoid process, is transferred with its attached tendon to the front of the socket. This replaces the missing bone and also provides a sling effect from the transferred tendon. It is usually considered when repairing the torn soft tissue alone would be unlikely to hold the shoulder. Individual results vary.
The arthroscopic version is performed through keyhole incisions with a camera, rather than through an open approach. It is a technically demanding operation with a number of steps that have to be done in a particular order, which is part of why surgeons travel to watch it being done.
Why surgeons observe each other operating
There is a limit to what can be learned about an operation from a written description or a video. Patient positioning, the exact placement of the portals, how the tissue is handled, how the instruments are passed, and what the surgeon does when the anatomy is not quite as expected are all visible only in theatre.
Seeing the same operation twice over two days also lets a visitor separate what is fixed about the technique from what varied because of the individual patient. One case shows what happened; two begin to show the method.
Related information
See our shoulder instability, anterior instability and Latarjet with labral repair pages, and our post on Latarjet stabilisation.