Han's technique: a new reduction technique for acute anterior shoulder dislocation

Introduction Acute anterior shoulder dislocation (AASD) is the most common joint dislocation. Here, we introduced a new reduction technique for AASD, named "Han's technique" (or "Touch overhead technique"). Methods Patients diagnosed with AASD were treated with "Han's technique" in the orthopaedic department of our hospital from October 2018 to November 2020. An orthopedic surgeon performed the reduction maneuver without any anesthesia or sedation throughout the reduction process. The fundamental information and related data were recorded, including patients' age, sex, dislocation side, previous dislocations history, reduction time, number of attempts at reduction, success rate of the reduction, intensity of pain during reduction using the 10-point visual analogue scale score (VAS), any complications, with or without the fracture and neurovascular examination results. Results Forty-one patients with AASD were involved in our study. Thirty-nine cases (95%) were primary dislocation. Eleven patients (27%) were complicated with large tubercle fracture and one patient (2%) complicated with inferior glenoid fractures. All patients were successfully reduced by Han's technique with mean reduction time was 138 s. The pain score during the reduction operation is only1.83 +/- 0.83 points. No neurovascular injury or iatrogenic fracture was found after reduction in all patients. Conclusions Han's technique (or Touch overhead technique) is a simple, safe, effective, mild and easy to master which can be operated by one surgeon without anesthesia or sedation for AASD.