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Capital Health Summit
Shoulder replacement set out by someone who had one: how total, reverse, and partial differ, what the rotator cuff decides, the rehab that makes the result, and how long the joint holds.
Shoulder replacement, from the worn joint to the settled result.

Resources

Most of what ranks well for shoulder replacement is written by people who would like to perform it. That is not a reason to distrust surgeons, but it is a reason to read them beside sources with nothing on the booking form. The bodies below set standards, publish evidence, or explain the operations without a sales pitch attached. Use them to test anything you read here, or anywhere else, before you act on it.

Shoulder and orthopaedic bodies

  • American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS OrthoInfo), orthoinfo.aaos.org: patient guides to total, reverse, and partial shoulder replacement, the techniques, the risks, and what recovery involves, from the surgeons’ own professional academy.
  • British Elbow and Shoulder Society (BESS), bess.ac.uk: a specialist society for shoulder and elbow surgery, with patient information and standards written by the surgeons who focus on this joint.
  • American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES): a specialist body whose membership concentrates on shoulder and elbow conditions, useful background on how the sub-speciality thinks about arthroplasty.

Independent health information

  • NHS, nhs.uk: plain, non-commercial explanations of shoulder replacement, why it is done, how the operation and recovery go, and how it is funded, written for patients rather than to win a booking.
  • Cleveland Clinic, my.clevelandclinic.org: clear, well-referenced patient articles on the types of shoulder replacement, the reverse design, and what to expect afterwards.

The registries

  • National Joint Registry (NJR), njrcentre.org.uk: the body that records shoulder replacements and tracks how implants perform and how often they need revising, the layer beneath the survival figures quoted on this site.

The underlying evidence

  • Peer-reviewed orthopaedic literature (PubMed), pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov: where the numbers here actually come from. Systematic reviews of 10-year implant survival, reverse versus anatomic outcomes, and infection and complication rates are worth reaching for whenever a claim sounds a little too neat.

What these are for

These are references for understanding, not a list of surgeons to ring. None of them can tell you whether a shoulder replacement suits you, or whether your joint needs a total, a reverse, or a partial; only a surgeon who examines you and reads your imaging can do that. Read them with the Medical Disclaimer in mind, and treat any single glowing before-and-after, wherever you find it, with the caution it deserves.