The meeting
The New Zealand Shoulder and Elbow Surgery Society held its annual scientific meeting in Rarotonga in July 2015. Guest speakers included Professor Itoi of Japan, Professor Galatz of the United States, Professor Jiang of China and Professor Bain of Australia.
What a scientific meeting is for
A subspecialty society such as this one exists to bring together the surgeons in a region who concentrate on one part of the body, in this case the shoulder and elbow. Its annual scientific meeting has a recognisable shape: members submit their own research, which is presented in short slots and then questioned from the floor, and a small number of guest speakers are invited from overseas to give longer lectures and to sit on panels. Inviting speakers from Japan, the United States, China and Australia to a meeting in the Pacific is a deliberate way of putting several different national approaches to the same problem in one room.
The presentations
Dr Cutbush presented on arthroscopic subscapularis repair, complex fracture surgery, shoulder joint replacement, acute AC joint repair, frozen shoulder and nerve injuries.
That range covers much of the shoulder. The subscapularis is the rotator cuff tendon at the front of the joint, which turns the arm inwards and holds the ball from the front. The AC joint is the small joint where the collarbone meets the shoulder blade, commonly injured in falls onto the point of the shoulder. Frozen shoulder is a condition in which the lining of the joint becomes inflamed and contracted, producing pain and progressive loss of movement. Each of these is assessed and managed differently, and treatment is an individual matter. Individual results vary.
The Inspace prosthesis
He also led a session for Smith & Nephew and Orthospace on the Inspace prosthesis. This is a bioabsorbable, saline-inflatable balloon placed into the subacromial space, intended for patients with massive irreparable rotator cuff tears.
The rationale is mechanical: in a shoulder where the cuff is absent, the balloon acts as a spacer to hold the head of the humerus down, allowing the deltoid to work more effectively, and it absorbs over time. It is one of several approaches to a difficult problem, and which is appropriate depends on the individual. Individual results vary.