Women Undergo Shoulder Replacement Surgery at an Older Age Than Men

Women tend to undergo shoulder replacement surgery at an older age than men, leading to more pain and functional disability following surgery for some.

“So, between the two X-rays he took that day, I was shocked when he said you need both of your shoulders replaced,” said Freida Jeffers, a patient at Mercy Medical Center.

Jeffers had both shoulders replaced less than five months apart. She had her right shoulder replaced in mid-September and the left shoulder replaced in February.

“I recovered amazingly well. My range of motion is phenomenal… even six weeks out when I started physical therapy,” Jeffers said.

Jeffers credits her successful recoveries to Mercy’s Shoulder Joint Journey Program. Patients take a course explaining the entire process from pre-op prep to post-op care, such as learning how to put on and take off a sling and what exercises to do before and after surgery.

“[The Shoulder Joint Journey Program] has brought all of the teams at the hospital together. Not only the surgeons, but everyone that works with us including the nursing staff, the physical therapists, the anesthesia doctors that put the patients to sleep—even including the paramedics,” said Gregory V. Gasbarro, M.D., a board-certified, shoulder fellowship-trained orthopedic surgeon at The Shoulder, Elbow, Wrist and Hand Center at Mercy and medical director of the Shoulder Joint Journey program.

Dr. Gasbarro, an orthopedic surgeon specializing in shoulder surgery, operated on Jeffers for both shoulders.

“So, in the surgery, what we do is we put this guide onto the patent’s actual socket, and it provides holes for us in the exact right location on the socket, and the right orientation of the socket to put the implant in the exact right way,” Dr. Gasbarro said.

Women often face unique physiological, anatomical, and practical challenges during the preparation and rehabilitation phases of joint replacement. Some of the challenges are linked to women undergoing shoulder replacement at an older age, when hormonal changes during menopause cause some to develop osteoporosis.

“For shoulder replacement in particular, there’s a lot of planning that we do before surgery with the CT scans and 3D modeling through software, where we can determine things like bone density, the amount of deformity a specific shoulder might have,” Dr. Gasbarro said.

Jeffers is getting ready to start physical therapy on her left shoulder and said the prep before and after surgery makes a major difference in recovery.

View Mercy orthopedic surgeon and shoulder specialist Dr. Gregory Gasbarro’s interview regarding preparing for and recovering from shoulder replacement surgery.