The arthroscopic Latarjet procedure: effective and safe

Shoulder dislocation is the most popular dislocation of a major joint (1), which results in severe pain and possible complications such as fracture of the humerus, glenoid, injury to blood vessels or nerves (1). When the movement of the humeral head over the eroded surface of the glenoid is excessive and symptomatic, it is known as instability. Shoulder instability following dislocation is often seen in young people (1). Surgical intervention is necessary for the patients suffering from recurrent shoulder instability following the first episode of shoulder dislocation (1). Anterior shoulder instability (ASI) is the major direction of dislocation and also the most operated shoulder instability (1). The common surgical treatments of recurrent ASI include the Bankart procedure (open or arthroscopic), the Latarjet and the Bristow procedures (open or arthroscopic) (2). One of the major function outcomes after surgery is to evaluate recurrence of instability. A 20-year follow-up study in 68 Latarjet procedure-treated patients showed that the postoperative rate of recurrence was only 5.9%, which indicated that Latarjet procedures gave excellent long-term outcomes in the treatment of anterior glenohumeral instability (3). More recently, arthroscopic Bankart-Bristow-Latarjet procedures were performed in 47 patients with glenoid bone loss and capsular deficiency and the patients were followed up for average 16 months with the mean Rowe score as 88±16.7, and the mean Walch-Duplay score as 87.6±12.9; this study illustrated that arthroscopic Latarjet procedure is a safe and reproducible technique (4). A larger scale study with 180 arthroscopic Latarjet procedures found that patient-reported outcomes have 91% excellent scores and 9% good at 26 months (5). However, the long term outcomes of arthroscopic Latarjet procedure have not been fully studied previously.