Complications of coracoid transfer procedures for the treatment of recurrent shoulder dislocation

Abstract Background Different surgical procedures have been described for the treatment of the recurrent anterior dislocation of the shoulder. Despite the documented success of the open procedures, some studies suggest that the arthroscopic technique leads to more favorable results. However, there still seems to be some disagreement concerning the incidence of complications, when comparing open and arthroscopic techniques. Objective and methods As an attempt to clarify these doubts about the incidence of complications associated with the different techniques, this study contains a free literature review along with a retrospective case series of the patients who underwent these procedures in an University hospital in the past 10 years. Discussion and conclusion There are various techniques for the treatment of the recurrent dislocation of the shoulder, all of them with known success when it comes to prevention of recurrence. However, all of them are invariably associated with high complication rates. Despite being associated with a slightly higher re-operation rate, in the literature, the arthroscopic technique was found to have an overall lower rate of complications when compared to the open procedures. Centro Hospitalar Sao Joao (CHSJ) presented a higher rate of screw related complications and revision surgery than the literature. However, concerning other complications and when assessing the procedures individually, no tendency was verified. One can therefore conclude that, despite being scarce, the Centro Hospitalar Sao Joao CHSJ data roughly overlap the literature.