At the symposium
At the Royal North Shore Shoulder Symposium in February 2018, speaking on experience with the arthroscopic Latarjet technique.
What the Latarjet procedure is
The Latarjet is an operation for shoulder instability, which is the term for a shoulder that dislocates or partly dislocates repeatedly. In some unstable shoulders the front rim of the socket, called the glenoid, has lost bone, either from the original injury or from repeated dislocations. Once enough bone is missing, a repair of the soft tissue alone has less to work with.
The Latarjet addresses this by moving a small piece of bone, the coracoid process, from the front of the shoulder blade across to the front of the glenoid, where it is fixed in place. This deepens and lengthens the socket, and the tendons still attached to the transferred bone add a further restraint across the front of the joint. It is one of several approaches to an unstable shoulder, alongside arthroscopic soft tissue repair, remplissage and other bone grafting options. The choice depends on how much bone is missing, what the patient does, and what surgery has already been attempted. Individual results vary, and the right operation for a given shoulder is a matter for individual assessment and discussion.
Arthroscopic and open approaches
The Latarjet was originally described as an open operation, performed through an incision at the front of the shoulder. It can also be performed arthroscopically, through several small portals using a camera. The arthroscopic version is technically demanding, because the graft has to be positioned and fixed accurately through small openings, and that is one of the reasons it remains a recurring subject at shoulder meetings.
Why symposiums of this kind are held
A symposium brings surgeons together to compare how they perform a particular operation and what they have found in doing it. Royal North Shore Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Sydney, and meetings hosted by teaching hospitals are a standard part of how surgical technique is discussed and refined in Australia.
Related information
See our shoulder instability, anterior instability and Latarjet and labral repair pages, and our later posts on the same series, including the 2024 Latarjet talk.