A Delhi hospital has performed a rare medical intervention for joint replacement of a 42-year-old patient who suffered from chronic pain in her right shoulder.

The doctors replaced her shoulder joints with Arthroscopic Superior Capsular Reconstruction (SCR), a procedure which is performed very rarely in India and is limited to a few hospitals only. The doctors at Fortis Hospital told that the patient had difficulty in lifting her right shoulder for over a year and was advised for a joint replacement surgery at various other hospitals. However, she was not convinced to go under traditional joint replacement surgery.

"She bore a large tendon tear in her shoulder which caused consistent and debilitating pain that she thought would live with rest of her life. Since the traditional joint replacement surgeries involved long incisions and the original joint is replaced with a metal implant, she was not convinced and visited us for a second opinion," said Praveen Tittal, Senior Consultant, Orthopedics, Arthroscopy and Sports Injury, at the Hospital.

Taking the patient's unwillingness for traditional joint surgery into account, the hospital decided to perform SCR procedure on her. Being a keyhole procedure, SCR procedure does not require as many sutures (row of stitches holding together the edges of a wound or surgical incision) as in case of a traditional shoulder surgery, doctors informed. It involves removal of graft from the patient's thigh which is sutured inside the shoulder on top of the joint and the remaining tendons are sutured back to the arm bone.

This method is quite common in countries like the US and Japan. However, it is unexplored in India. "Most of the doctors I consulted suggested me to undergo shoulder joint replacement surgery, which I was not convinced about, so I kept delaying the surgery. I am glad that the one-year wait has paid off and my shoulder joint is preserved," the patient said on condition of anonymity.