Me and my chronically unstable shoulder

Today I travelled to Munich to have the final two preparation meetings with the surgeon and the anesthetist in the clinic where the surgery will be performed. Those meetings are scheduled to warn you once more of all the potential side effects of surgery and anesthesia. As usual I was quite surprised to learn about all the different things that could go wrong. Who would have thought that one of the complications of a shoulder surgery could be permanent hoarseness? Highlights of those meetings included getting a nice arrow painted onto my right shoulder – just in case – and getting a fancy new orthosis which looks a lot sleeker than the ones I used to have. I also got my final surgery appointment for 11 AM the following day which meant that I had to turn up at the hospital at 7AM.

I arranged appointments with four different shoulder specialists to get different perspectives and to be able to compare their approaches. 3 out of 4 specialist that I saw recommended the Latarjet procedure to treat the instability. 2 out of the 3 were recommending the open Latarjet procedure while one surgeon had specialized in the arthroscopic procedure. The specialists that recommended this procedure also had a lot of experience performing the surgery. This is a key point when you select the surgeon for a Latarjet procedure. Even today in Germany for example, this procedure is not widely used and usually reserved for contact athletes or people with previous surgeries that did not help. This is not something you want to get done by a surgeon next door who takes care of hip replacements, knees, shoulders and whatever comes his/her way. You really want an experienced surgeon that specializes in shoulders and has done the Latarjet procedure many times before. The procedure itself is m...