Therapeutic Options

1. Every patient is a unique case

The ideal therapeutic option for treating a precisely defined shoulder pathology can be adjusted according to criteria specific to each patient: age, professional or sporting context, medical history, and the patient's motivation to undertake post-operative rehabilitation.

In practice, the decision to operate on a patient is made jointly by a medical team bringing together the treating physician, the anaesthetist and the surgeon.

2. Surgery is not a systematic therapeutic option

Our 28 years devoted exclusively to shoulder pathology have shown us that rehabilitation, properly managed according to our protocol, is enough to stabilise, or even cure, three patients out of four (6,000 patients operated on out of 24,000 seen in consultation).

3. We perform 80% of our surgical procedures using arthroscopic microsurgery technique

Arthroscopic shoulder surgery allows a patient to be operated on without leaving a scar on the skin, without infection risk, and while considerably reducing post-operative pain.

4. About 20% of our surgical procedures are performed conventionally, "open"

Surgery for instability in athletes and shoulder prosthesis placement.

5. Rehabilitation, an essential partner

After shoulder surgery, rehabilitation is an essential partner for us, since it accounts for 50% of the final functional outcome.

Our role is to prepare the patient before the intervention by choosing a physiotherapist who knows our protocols and whom we trust to care for the patient after the intervention and keep them motivated.

It is also our role to oversee post-operative rehabilitation, seeing the patient regularly at 15 and 45 days, then at 3 and 6 months post-operatively, either directly in consultation or using suitable communication tools (e.g. Skype®), when the patient lives in a country far from Switzerland.

6. Cortisone injections

They can transiently reduce severe shoulder pain:

• If this temporary therapeutic option is based on a precise diagnosis.
• If the injection is performed in the consultation room by the shoulder specialist surgeon or by a radiologist under fluoroscopic control.

In every case, cortisone injection does not treat the cause of the pain, only the symptom.

Beware of repeated cortisone injections without a prior X-ray assessment and without a precise diagnosis of the shoulder pathology being treated!