Players continue to alternate between nine hands of PLO and nine hands of PLH. Now that the game has become short-handed, that means it is no longer the case that we are seeing one game played for just a single orbit, but now the same game carries on into half of a second orbit.
Significant? Could be. Now we have a situation where (for example) a particularly strong PLO player might get to play hands from late position twice during a single round of PLO, rather than just once.