Many people suffer from some type of shoulder injury. Shoulder dislocations are the most common and once they occur they can easily happen again. Those most at risk are athletes who use high intensity overhead motions and workers who perform the same tasks over and over again. But anyone who puts undo strain on their shoulder joint is at risk for injury.
If dislocations do become a problem, then surgery may be the answer. This was the case for former Fresno Falcon hockey player Lanny Gare, who had arthroscopic surgery to get back into the game.
This was the second time Lanny’s right shoulder dislocated while playing hockey and since it becomes easier for the injury to happen again, he chose to have minimally invasive surgery to have it repaired.
“The best path for me to take was the surgery, otherwise it probably would have kept popping out once a game or something,” Lanny said.
Lanny went to orthopedic surgeon Peter Simonian at Simonian Sports Medicine Clinic in Fresno.
“When there’s a recurrent dislocation as a result of trauma that’s when we have to consider stabilizing the shoulder to protect it and keep it from coming out in the future,” Dr. Simonian said.
Dr. Simonian repaired a tear in the cartilage and repositioned Lanny’s right ball joint into the shoulder socket using tiny anchors.
“We do this just through two or three little holes and pull the tissue up to the bone hole that was created,” Dr. Simonian said. “That pulls the tissue back up to an anatomically correct position and we even tighten it a little more to compensate for the tissues that have stretched out.”
A key to healing, Dr. Simonian says, is not to push a lot of movement too soon.
“You will re-injure it if you try to come back too soon,” Lanny said. “That’s one thing Dr. Simonian has stressed. He wants me to make sure I’m ready and comfortable. And I’m not going to push it.”
Click here to learn more about shoulder dislocations and arthroscopic surgery.