Dr. Brian Werner:
Total shoulder replacement is kind of the end of the game for the shoulder. So a shoulder
that's gone on and gotten bone on bone arthritis typically is why we do a shoulder replacement. 

Dr. Stephen Brockmeier:
The most common reasons I see patients to consider shoulder replacement surgery, the single most common is osteoarthritis of the joint, which is a wear and tear process leading to eventual cartilage breakdown. 

Dr. Brian Werner:
The symptoms of shoulder arthritis are similar to other symptoms that patients will present with in their shoulders with other injuries, but they're increasing pain in the shoulder, particularly at night, decreasing function in the shoulder, and then stiffness in the shoulder. 

Dr. Stephen Brockmeier:
We also see patients who come in with more inflammatory-based arthritis of the joint. And then the final problem that we see most commonly is related to trauma, whether it be soft tissue-based trauma, like rotator cuff disease, or trauma to the bones around the shoulder. 

Dr. Brian Werner:
There's actually two different types of shoulder replacements. You have regular shoulder replacements, where you replace the ball with a ball, and the socket with a socket. And then you also have what's called a reverse shoulder replacement, where we do the surgery backward. We put a ball in the socket side, and a socket on the ball side. While that sounds a little bit confusing, the reason for doing that is for a specific subset of patients who have shoulder arthritis without a rotator cuff. If you do a regular shoulder replacement in that patient, they're not able to lift their arm up and actually use their arm. So a reverse shoulder replacement was developed specifically for patients with arthritis due to not having a rotator cuff. And we found that it works very, very well in those patients. Collectively, we do over 200 shoulder replacements a year, which is a very high number across the United States. So it's something we have a lot of experience in, and that definitely helps produce good outcomes after them. 

Dr. Stephen Brockmeier:
I think we cover the spectrum in our orthopedic department as far as caring for any problem that any patient will have. And we're the common referral destination for patients with more challenging problems across our state.