Arthroscopic rotator cuff repair: Is healing enough?

Abstract

Hypothesis/background: Arthroscopic rotator cuff repair most commonly results in good clinical outcomes, however understanding of predictive factors influencing the final clinical outcome is limited.

Aim: The purpose of our study was to evaluate clinical outcomes of patients with healed supraspinatus tendon after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair and to identify its pre- and peri-operative predictive factors of good clinical results.

Methods: A multi-center prospective study followed up 188 patients, who had a healed tendon after an arthroscopic repair of isolated supraspinatus tear. Inclusion criteria were: age under 70 years old, isolated supraspinatus tear, stage 0 or I of fatty infiltration, healed supraspinatus tendon at one year postoperatively and the same arthroscopic double row rotator cuff repair used in all patients. Clinical assessment used Constant Murley Score (CMS) and Subjective Shoulder Value (SSV) preoperatively and at one year postoperatively. Ultrasound (US) control checked tendon repair quality based on Sugaya classification. Types I-II-III were considered as healed.

Results: The average age of our cohort was 57.57 (range; 41 to 70) years and the female to male ratio was 1.14 (range; 100 to 87). The average preoperative CMS was 53.75±13.50 (mean±SD; range; 16 to 83). At final follow up, the average postoperative CMS was 79.95±12.05 (mean±SD; range; 28 to 100). 12.22% (23/188) of patients, who had a CMS score below 70, had a clinically significant difference compared to the average CMS, due to the fact that the minimal clinically significant difference (MCID) in CMS is 10. A statistical analysis has shown that in patients with lower scores there was only a significant dominance of females (p-value=0.001). No difference was found in regards to age, preoperative CMS, fatty degeneration and other factors.

Conclusion: Our study showed that despite all patients had a healed repair of supraspinatus, not all of them experienced a good final clinical outcome. The only factor negatively influencing the final clinical outcome was a female gender. No other structural factors seemed to influence the final clinical results. Futures studies should focus more on analyzing which personality traits and other psychosocial factors play an important role in determining the final outcome after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair.

Level of evidence: III; retrospective cohort study.

Keywords: Complication; Predictive; Psychosocial; Results; Satisfaction; Supraspinatus.