Matthew Crawford - A First for Outpatient Surgery

When Matthew Crawford went in for total shoulder replacement surgery last August, he didn’t know it would be a milestone event for Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. It marked the first time the procedure was performed at Henry Mayo’s Outpatient Surgery Center, eliminating the need for a hospital stay.

Crawford, a Castaic resident who suffered from severe shoulder pain, was able to arrive for the procedure in the morning and leave by noon. “Henry Mayo was great. Dr. Shybut was awesome. The staff was excellent. We were in and out.”

Total shoulder replacement involves replacing the shoulder joint with artificial parts. Traditionally, it has been performed on an inpatient basis, but with advances in surgical techniques, it’s becoming more common as an outpatient procedure. This means patients can recover at home, improving recovery time and reducing costs.  

“Anytime there’s a first of something, it’s an advancement,” says Theodore Shybut, MD, FAAOS, FAANA, a fellowship-trained orthopedic sports medicine surgeon on the Henry Mayo Medical staff who specializes in arthroscopic and reconstructive surgery of the knee and shoulder.

“In the past, it’s been a big operation to replace a joint, and patients would need to stay in the hospital a few nights. But this has gotten better with new treatment protocols and anesthesia blocks, allowing patients to go home the same day. It’s appealing for a lot of people to recover at home than in the hospital,” he says, adding patients still need to wear a sling for a few weeks and go through rehabilitation, including physical therapy and home exercises.

Crawford attributes his shoulder pain to 30 years of lifting people onto ambulances and working as a paramedic for American Medical Response, Inc. a large, private ambulance company. He left his job in 2020 because of his nagging injury and now works as a set medic for the movie industry.

“I was in constant pain. It would wake me up and my arm would go numb and I felt achy all the time,” he says. An x-ray showed there was no cartilage in his right shoulder – just bone on bone. The pain lasted for three years before he decided to do something about it.

Crawford took advantage of his downtime during the writer’s strike to finally have his shoulder repaired. Several months following his surgery, he is recovering well.

“I didn’t realize how much pain I was in until after the surgery,” he says, then echoes what others who have lived through years of shoulder pain say: “I wish I had the surgery earlier.”