On the faculty
With thanks to Zimmer for the invitation to join the faculty of their advanced shoulder symposium, to be held in Sydney in February 2018. The faculty is a highly experienced one.
The international surgeons include Prof John Sperling and Prof Quinn Throckmorton. I visited both of them during 2017 to learn their shoulder arthroplasty techniques, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and in Memphis, Tennessee respectively.
Looking forward to the meeting.
What shoulder arthroplasty is
Arthroplasty is joint replacement. In a shoulder replacement the worn surfaces of the joint are replaced with artificial components. An anatomic replacement reproduces the natural ball and socket arrangement and relies on the rotator cuff still working. A reverse replacement inverts that arrangement, placing the ball on the socket side and the cup on the upper arm bone, so that the deltoid muscle can lift the arm when the rotator cuff is no longer able to. Which is appropriate depends on the state of the joint surfaces, the bone and the rotator cuff. Individual results vary.
What an advanced symposium covers
A symposium described as advanced is aimed at surgeons who already perform the operations being discussed. Rather than working through the standard case, the programme tends to concentrate on the difficult ones: deficient bone on the socket side, previous surgery that has not worked out, infection, fracture around an existing implant, and the decisions on which experienced surgeons genuinely disagree. Case based discussion and panel debate suit that content better than lectures do.
Why faculty are drawn from several countries
Practice in shoulder replacement varies between countries, in implant choice, in indications and in rehabilitation. Putting surgeons from different systems on the same faculty means an audience hears more than one defensible approach to the same problem, and hears each one argued against. That is more useful than a single consistent message, because it shows where the evidence is settled and where it is not.
Related information
See our posts on visiting Dr John Sperling at the Mayo Clinic and Dr Quinn Throckmorton in Memphis, and the symposium itself. See also our anatomic total shoulder replacement and reverse total shoulder replacement pages.