Today, about 53,000 people in the United States have shoulder replacement surgery each year, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Often, this surgery has been used for many other painful conditions of the shoulders, such as different forms of arthritis.
If nonsurgical treatments, such as medications and activity charges, are no longer helpful in relieving pain, one may want to consider the shoulder joint replacement surgery. It is a safe and effective procedure, which will help relieve pain and help one to resume everyday activities again.
In shoulder replacement surgery, the damaged parts of the shoulder are removed and then replaced with artificial components, which is called prosthesis. The treatment options are either to replace just the head of the humerus bone (ball), or to replace both the ball and the socket (glenoid).
This is the doctor you want!
Dr. Michael J. O'Brien. Dr. O’Brien is fellowship-trained Orthopaedic Surgeons specializing in Shoulder and Upper Extremity conditions and Sports Medicine. After the normal 5 years of training after medical school as an Orthopaedic Surgeon, Dr. O’Brien added a year of specialized Shoulder and Elbow surgical training at the prestigious Rothman Institute/Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. Part of that training focused on Shoulder Joint Replacements. He arrived at Tulane in 2009 as one of the region’s first Orthopaedic Surgeons with specific fellowship training in this procedure. In 2019, he added the use of the Exactech GPS system to increase the consistency and precision of the placement of the new joint. We don’t think you’ll want to proceed without Dr. O’Brien’s experience and the added assist from Exactech GPS.
