At the RNS Shoulder Conference
Dr Kenneth Cutbush spoke at the RNS Shoulder Conference on the arthroscopic Latarjet procedure.
He has performed over 350 arthroscopic Latarjet procedures with labral repair, and presented the results from the first 330 of those cases.
The arthroscopic version of the Latarjet is technically demanding and is performed by relatively few surgeons, so consistent series of this size are uncommon and are worth presenting. Individual results vary.
What the procedure involves
The Latarjet procedure treats anterior shoulder instability, in which the ball of the shoulder repeatedly slips forward out of its socket. A small piece of bone, the coracoid process, is transferred with its attached tendon to the front of the socket. This deepens a socket that has lost bone and adds a restraint across the front of the joint.
The labrum is the rim of soft tissue around the edge of the socket. It is commonly torn in a shoulder that has dislocated, and repairing it addresses a different part of the problem from the bone transfer. Performing both arthroscopically means working through small portals with a camera inside the joint rather than through an open incision at the front of the shoulder.
Why a case series is presented
A case series is a report of a group of patients treated the same way by the same surgeon or unit, with their outcomes and complications recorded. It is not a comparative trial and cannot establish that one operation is better than another. What it can do is describe what happened to a defined group of patients over time, including how often a particular complication occurred and how often further surgery was needed.
Presenting such a series at a meeting puts it in front of surgeons who perform the same operation and who will question the selection of patients, the way outcomes were measured and the length of follow up. That questioning is part of how a technique is assessed, and it usually happens at meetings before the work appears in print.
Related information
See our shoulder instability page, and our posts on the Latarjet debate at the same meeting and the Latarjet and labral repair publication. See also our anterior instability, Latarjet with labral repair and stabilisation pages.