Background: The common surgical procedure in the treatment of bilateral shoulder osteoarthritis is surgical correction in two steps. There is little experience regarding the safety and the effectiveness of the simultaneous bilateral shoulder arthroplasty, as for other joints like knee and hip. In this study the results of the surgical procedure of both shoulders, in a single surgical stage, are presented and compared with an equal number of patients who underwent total shoulder arthroplasty in both their shoulders in two different stages.
Materials and Method: We studied a series of 7 patients treated with bilateral shoulder arthroplasty in a single stage procedure for severe degenerative glenohumeral joint disease. The average age at the time of surgery was 72 years. These were 4 patients with primary osteoarthritis (8 total anatomical prostheses) and 3 patients with rotator cuff arthropathy (6 reverse prostheses). The second series include 7 consecutive patients who underwent the same shoulder arthroplasties in two different stages for the same diseases. The average age was 69 years and the time between the two operations was 6 to 12 months.
The effectiveness of each one of the two procedures was evaluated on the basis of multiple objective characteristics like safety, total surgical duration, total blood loss, Constant Score, range of motion of the joints, post-surgical discomfort (pain, stiffness, motion, disability), post-surgical complications and ability of resumption of daily living activities.
Results: The average follow up was 18 months. Patients that underwent bilateral shoulder arthroplasty in one stage had significantly shorter total time of in-hospital stay (mean stay 5 days in the first and 9.3 days in the second group), recovery (9 weeks vs. 20 weeks) and proportionately lower rate of post-operative blood loss in comparison with the patients that were treated with two different surgical procedures. The average need for blood transfusion was 2 blood units in the first group and 3.5 blood units in the second. The overall rate of complication was the same in two groups. The Constant Score improvement and the joint function, range of motion and pain improved more, but not in a statistically significant degree in the single-stage group.
Conclusions: Bilateral shoulder arthroplasty in a single stage, in carefully chosen patients regarding their general condition, is a safe procedure, not associated with increase in complications, yielded better clinical results, reduced in-hospital stay and recovery period and decreased patient discomfort in comparison to the standard surgical procedure in two surgical stages and must be considered for selected cases.
