Shoulder Replacement Surgery Options at Baptist Health Louisville

Shoulder Replacement Surgery Options at Baptist Health Louisville Healthtalk Transcript

Ryan Eads, MD, Orthopedic Surgery
Baptist Health Louisville

Ryan Eads, MD:

We see patients who are potentially looking for shoulder surgery when [they] start having more pain that hasn't gotten better on its own and is inhibiting their daily life. We start with X-rays to try to find the diagnosis, and then we start with conservative treatment as far as physical therapies, medications [or] injections. Depending on what their diagnosis is or what they're suffering from, after all those things fail, that's when we look at surgical options.

Shoulder replacement consists of taking the joint itself — the cartilage and some of the bone — and replacing it with metal and plastic. You actually cut out the humeral head, place a metal stem in the middle of the humerus, and put a plastic liner or a metal ball there. Depending on the type of shoulder replacement, you can go to the socket side and put either a plastic liner or metal ball there to replace the joint.

One of the advances we have in shoulder replacement is preoperative planning. We get a special CT scan ahead of surgery, upload it to a computer program and look at the patient's normal anatomy, and then pick the best size implants and the correct angulation to try to give them the best outcome and range of motion.

Some of the benefits of having shoulder replacement at Baptist Health are that we do a lot of them. The whole team, not just the surgeon, but all the staff in the OR room, do a lot of these every day. Everyone on the team knows how to do it as best as possible.

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