Stiff shoulders after rotator cuff repair may be less likely to require revision surgery
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CHICAGO — Patients with stiff shoulders after rotator cuff repair were more likely to be satisfied with their repair and less likely to require revision surgery than patients without stiff shoulders, according to results presented here.
George A. C. Murrell, MD, and colleagues compared range of motion, shoulder function, shoulder strength and rotator cuff integrity using ultrasound between patients with and patients without stiff shoulders who underwent arthroscopic rotator cuff repair. Patients were matched for calendar year of surgery.
“For each year, we divided patients into the lower 15th percentile, in terms of external rotation, vs. the upper 15th percentile, in terms of external rotation, to give us a stiff group and a non-stiff group with a minimum of 2 years follow-up,” Murrell said in his presentation at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting.
At 6 months postoperatively, Murrell noted patients in the stiff shoulder group had a retear rate of less than 3% vs. a 20% retear rate in the non-stiff shoulder group.
“As we followed them out, those differences continued much the same with the stiff group being better than the non-stiff group at long-term follow-up,” Murrell said.
Results showed postoperative stiffness resolved 5 years after surgery for all measurements except external rotation. Murrell noted patients in the stiff shoulder group had a less than 5% chance of undergoing revision surgery compared with patients in the non-stiff shoulder group who had greater than a 20% chance of undergoing revision surgery.
“I think the most important data here is, in the longer-term, patients ranked overall shoulder satisfaction [and] the group that had early stiffness ranked their shoulders better than the group that didn’t have the stiffness at 6 weeks,” Murrell said.
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Millican C, et al. Paper 624. Presented at: American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting. March 22-26, 2022; Chicago.
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