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Retraction pace of tendon and muscle differ after rotator cuff tear
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A symposium at this year’s EFORT Congress will address the diagnosis and treatment of rotator cuff injuries. Among the speakers is Dominik Meyer, MD, of Zurich, who will speak on the biological aspects of rotator cuff healing.
“The new things that I will be talking about are the function of the cuff’s musculature after a rotator cuff tear. Muscles lose a lot of strength and elasticity, and the two combined result in a decreased ability to perform muscle work,” Meyer told Orthopaedics Today Europe, noting that the shorter excursion of the musculature may be an equally important problem as the chronic retraction in a long-standing rotator cuff tear.
Meyer plans to present data on muscle work in a sheep model, as well as data detailing the retraction of muscles and tendons over time in man: Tendons have the ability to adapt their length dynamically when not used. However, this happens at a slower pace than the adaptations in muscle. Therefore, tendon and muscle may have to be looked at separately when evaluating if and how to perform a repair.
“And that’s very new data which may not be limited to the rotator cuff,” Meyer said.
Reference:
- Meyer D. Biological and physiological basis of RC healing. To be presented at the 2011 EFORT Congress. June 1-4. Copenhagen.
- Dominik Meyer, MD, can be reached at University of Zurich, Balgrist Hospital, Forchstr. 340, CH-8008 Zurich; +41 44 386 12 83; e-mail: dominik.meyer@balgrist.ch.
