Shoulder injury: How doctors operate on the sensitive joint

This morning, only Nick Schawe’s right arm and shoulder are visible. The rest of the 19-year-old lies hidden under the green surgical cloth. Under the bright surgical lamp, his arm glows in the typical orange of the disinfectant. A tattooed rose is emblazoned on his muscular shoulder. Trauma surgeon Helmut Lill hardly notices it. He is only interested in the tissue beneath the skin. He is about to make three small incisions here and then insert mini steel tubes into the joint: one for a camera, the other two for the surgical instruments. Lill is chief physician of the Clinic for Orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery at the Diakovere Friederikenstift in Hanover. He is one of the leading experts in shoulder surgery in Germany. In Schawe’s case, he plans to stabilize his shoulder using keyhole technology. Three weeks ago, the young man fell on his outstretched arm, dislocated his shoulder joint, and tore the joint capsule and ligaments. It is just after eight when Lill puts the scalpel on the skin.

A few years earlier, Schawe had already been on Lill’s operating table with the same injury. As a soccer goalkeeper, the teenager had collided with another player and then hit his shoulder with full force. The first orthopedist who looked after the boy said, “never again soccer.” But Lill saved the shoulder. It lasted for five years, until Schawe dove into the right corner of the goal during soccer training three weeks ago. “I twisted my upper body and landed on my shoulder again,” he says. He immediately felt severe pain and felt a dent in his shoulder. “I knew then that it had dislocated again.” For the young athlete, the injury feels like a catastrophe. It will prevent him from starting police school in September and the upcoming soccer season with his new club. Now he hopes that surgeon Lill can help him a second time.