This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Corticosteroids relieved rotator cuff tear pain in geriatric patients
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Italian researchers found in a recent study that intraarticular corticosteroid injections relieved pain in geriatric patients with rotator cuff tears and that active range of motion was an important predictor of pain outcomes.
“This finding can be useful to physicians when deciding on the type of patients who might best benefit from intraarticular injections of corticosteroids,” the investigators wrote in the abstract.
They studied 60 patients with rotator cuff tears and divided them into three groups of 20 patients each. One group received a single 40 mg triamcinolone acetonide intraarticular injection. Another group repeat 40 mg triamcinolone acetonide intraarticular injections 21 days apart and the third group served as the controls and had no injections.
All patients participated in rehabilitation.
Gialanella and colleagues used a backward stepwise regression analysis to assess the effectiveness of treatment and pain improvement. They determined that the independent variables consisted of age, sex, symptom duration, tear size, passive and active range of motion (ROM), NSAIDs requested request, pain at rest, number of triamcinolone injections and severity of osteoarthritis.
The researchers found greater effectiveness and improvement in pain during activities and at night at 3 months and 6 months after therapy compared to controls. Active ROM was the sole predictor of pain during activity at 3 months, but it also predicted effectiveness of treatment during activity, pain at night and for improved pain at night. At 6 months post-therapy, active ROM predicted pain at night, the investigators noted.
Age was a predictor of pain at night, according to the results, and tear size predicted effectiveness of the injections and improvement in pain during activity.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts