Authors’ Reply
We thank Drs. van der Linde, van Kampen, and Willems for their interest and kind words regarding our article and appreciate their comments. They recognize a challenging postoperative evaluation of shoulder stability and recommend consideration of subluxations as failures based on sound argument. Both pre- and postoperatively, the assessment of shoulder stability exhibits a wide spectrum from positional apprehension to frank dislocation requiring manual reduction.
In between, there is significant variation in the patient’s reporting of “instability.” Since the primary purpose of surgery for instability is to gain stability, the subjective feeling of one’s “shoulder popping out” after surgery is largely a “failure.” In fact, even without dislocation, this may lead a patient to undergo revision stabilization.
Full Article: Authors’ Reply
