Imaging in shoulder instability with focus on identifying and measuring bone loss: A narrative review

Bone loss is a key burning issue in shoulder instability, mainly because its presence or the lack of it can significantly swing the surgical pendulum from an open bony augmentation to a standard arthroscopic soft tissue repair, respectively. Each of these surgeries has its own separate technical challenges and a separate recovery protocol hence, it behoves upon the surgeon to be able to precisely calculate the amount of bone loss pre-operatively, to assist in clinical decision making. We review the recent literature studying the commonly used imaging methods for calculating bone loss in shoulder instability, to enable the reader in integrating these concepts in their practice.