A second evening on the rotator cuff
Looking forward to the Johnson & Johnson webinar on Wednesday 17 June at 7:30pm. We are coming back for a second evening discussing the rotator cuff, covering strategies and techniques for rotator cuff problems. It will be an hour of rotator cuff cases.
What the rotator cuff is
The rotator cuff is a group of four muscles whose tendons wrap around the top of the upper arm bone and hold the ball of the shoulder centred in its shallow socket. It does two jobs at once: it rotates and lifts the arm, and it stabilises the joint while the larger muscles move it. A tear in one of those tendons therefore tends to produce both weakness and pain, often worst on reaching overhead or lying on that side at night. Tears happen suddenly through injury or develop gradually as a tendon wears, and not every tear needs an operation. Individual results vary.
Why case-based teaching
An hour of cases is a different exercise from an hour of lecturing. Rotator cuff surgery is full of decisions that cannot be reduced to a rule: whether a tear is repairable at all, how to handle a tendon that has retracted, what to do when the bone will not hold an anchor well, and when a repair is not the right answer in the first place. Working through real cases surfaces those judgements in a way a prepared talk does not, and the disagreements between surgeons on a panel are usually the most instructive part.
The webinar format matters for a practical reason as well. A meeting requires travel, and an evening session delivered online can be attended by surgeons in regional practice who would otherwise not be in the room. Continuing education of this kind is a standing expectation of surgical practice rather than an optional extra, because technique and the evidence behind it keep moving after training ends.
For patients reading this
This was a teaching session for surgeons. If you are looking for information about your own shoulder, our rotator cuff tear and rotator cuff repair pages are written for patients, and our post on rehabilitation after a rotator cuff repair covers recovery.