Speaking at ISAKOS
An invitation to speak at the annual congress of ISAKOS, the International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery & Orthopaedic Sports Medicine, held in Munich, Germany, on experience with the arthroscopic Latarjet procedure.
ISAKOS is an international society whose members are surgeons working in arthroscopy, knee surgery and orthopaedic sports medicine. It brings together national societies from across the world, publishes education material, and approves teaching courses and travelling fellowships. Its congresses are among the main international venues at which arthroscopic shoulder work is presented and argued over.
The arthroscopic Latarjet procedure
The Latarjet procedure is used for anterior shoulder instability, where the shoulder dislocates forwards. It transfers the coracoid process, a small hook of bone at the front of the shoulder blade, together with its attached tendon, onto the front rim of the glenoid socket. That deepens a socket from which bone has been lost and provides a physical block against the ball coming forward, while the transferred tendon adds a sling effect across the front of the joint.
Performing it arthroscopically means doing all of that through keyhole portals with a camera, rather than through an open incision at the front of the shoulder. The bone has to be cut, passed through the tissues and fixed in the correct position with limited access and close to important nerves, which is why the approach is described as technically demanding. Individual results vary.
The series presented
The talk covered 420 arthroscopic Latarjet cases performed to date, with outcomes presented for the first 297 patients, all with more than two years of follow-up.
A series of that size with that length of follow-up is worth presenting because the arthroscopic version of the Latarjet procedure is technically demanding and performed by relatively few surgeons. Longer-term data from a single consistent series helps establish what can reasonably be expected of it. Individual results vary.
Two years is also the point at which instability results start to become meaningful, because a shoulder that is going to give way again often does so within that period rather than immediately.
Related information
- Our shoulder instability and anterior instability pages
- Our Latarjet with labral repair page
- Our post on Latarjet stabilisation
- Our post on the Latarjet and labral repair publication