Shoulder surgery that’s always been fascinating to me is that there’s still a significant amount of technology that is coming out every year to treat some of these challenging conditions within the shoulder.
If you’ve looked on my website or you’ve talked to friends or neighbors who have had shoulder replacement surgery, just one example is the reverse shoulder replacement. It’s really revolutionized our ability to treat patients and a lot of conditions that we really didn’t have good solutions for until that was approved by the FDA in 2004.
There are other situations in the shoulder where that happens on a regular basis as well as we’re developing new technologies to treat rotator cuff tears, new technologies to treat fractures and other conditions of the shoulder.
What that does is, as a shoulder surgeon, it gives me tools in my toolbox that I can take into the operating room, gives me more confidence to sit with patients, give them advice, and be able to counsel them, and help provide a higher likelihood of having the kind of outcome that they’re looking for.
It’s really an exciting time to be practicing shoulder surgery and being able to take care of patients as they come in with these various concerns.