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Conference Presentation ·30 November 2018

Queensland Shoulder Society meeting

Professor Richard Page presenting registry data at the Queensland Shoulder Society meeting
Professor Richard Page presenting registry data at the Queensland Shoulder Society meeting

Registry data on shoulder replacement

Professor Richard Page, of Geelong, spoke at the Queensland Shoulder Society meeting on the latest data from the Australian Orthopaedic Association National Joint Replacement Registry on shoulder replacements.

Professor Richard Page presenting registry data at the Queensland Shoulder Society meeting

What a shoulder society meeting is

A state shoulder society is a professional grouping of the surgeons, and often the physiotherapists and researchers, who work on shoulders in one region. Meetings are small, held in an evening or across a day, and built around case presentations and invited talks. The value lies in the scale: a small room of people who all operate on shoulders will discuss a difficult case more frankly than a large congress audience will, and local practice gets examined in a way it otherwise would not.

What shoulder replacement involves

A shoulder replacement removes the worn surfaces of an arthritic joint and replaces them with artificial components. In an anatomic replacement the normal arrangement is preserved, with a ball on the arm bone and a socket on the shoulder blade, and the patient's own rotator cuff continues to drive the shoulder. In a reverse replacement the two are swapped over, so that the deltoid does that work instead, which is what makes it useful where the cuff is no longer functioning. Both are recorded in the registry, and it is the comparison between them over time that the registry reports make possible. Individual results vary.

Why the registry matters

The shoulder registry began collecting data in 2004 and covers approximately 44,800 procedures. Because it captures shoulder replacements performed across the country rather than within individual units, it can detect differences in how long particular implants last that no single practice would have the numbers to see.

That has a direct effect on practice: implants that perform poorly in the registry data are used less, and the data informs the discussion with patients about what to expect. The annual reports are freely available.

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