BACKGROUND Rotator cuff tears are very common, but little is known about the outcome of nonoperative treatment of symptomatic tears in terms of progression and the need for surgical intervention. METHODS Fifty-nine shoulders in fifty-four patients (thirty-three women and a mean age of 58.8 years) with rotator cuff tears on initial magnetic resonance imaging who had been managed nonoperatively...

Background Many patients with rotator cuff tears suffer from nocturnal shoulder pain, resulting in sleep disturbance. Purpose To determine whether rotator cuff tear size correlated with sleep disturbance in patients with full-thickness rotator cuff tears. Study Design Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods Patients with a diagnosis of unilateral full-thickness rotator cuff t...

BACKGROUND Six classification systems have been proposed for describing rotator cuff tears designed to help understand their natural history and make treatment decisions. PURPOSE To assess the interobserver variation for these classification systems and identify the method with the best interobserver agreement. STUDY DESIGN Cohort study (diagnosis); Level of evidence, 2. METHODS Six rotat...

Full-thickness tears to the rotator cuff can cause severe pain and disability. Untreated tears progress in size and are associated with muscle atrophy and an infiltration of fat to the area, a condition known as "fatty degeneration." To improve the treatment of rotator cuff tears, a greater understanding of the changes in the contractile properties of muscle fibers and the molecular regulation ...

  Abstract   Background: Despite being the largest rotator cuff tendon of the shoulder, the   function and clinical relevance of subscapularis pathology has been largely ignored   in the literature. Although many studies have focused on subscapularis tears recently,   majority of them reported techniques for open repair. The advent of arthroscopy and   arthroscopic repair techniques has opened ...

BACKGROUND We retrospectively assessed the clinical outcomes and investigated risk factors influencing retear after arthroscopic suture bridge repair technique for rotator cuff tear through clinical assessment and magnetic resonance arthrography (MRA). METHODS Between January 2008 and April 2011, sixty-two cases of full-thickness rotator cuff tear were treated with arthroscopic suture bridge ...

Subscapularis is the most powerful muscle in the rotator cuff. A steep learning curve and constrained space anteriorly make the repair difficult. In massive tears of the rotator cuff, repair of the subscapularis initially makes the massive supraspinatus tear repairable. We present our technique to repair subscapularis and supraspinatus tear by double-row anchors in a knotless and tension-free m...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association of aortic arch calcification, a surrogate marker of atherosclerosis, with rotator cuff tendinosis and tears given the hypothesis that decreased tendon vascularity is a contributing factor in the etiology of tendon degeneration. A retrospective review was performed to identify patients ages 50 to 90 years who had a shoulder MRI and a c...

BACKGROUND Microvascular blood flow in the tendon plays an important role in the pathogenesis of rotator cuff abnormalities. There are conflicting views about the presence of a hypovascular zone in the supraspinatus tendon. Besides, no studies have looked at the pattern of blood flow around a partial-thickness tear. Our aim was to measure microvascular blood flow in normal and a range of pathol...

The subacromial bursa is recognized as a site associated with the shoulder pain caused by rotator cuff disease in the middle-aged and elderly. Substance P is contained in primary afferent nerves, and its quantity increases during chronic pain. The amount of substance P in the subacromial bursa of patients with rotator cuff disease was examined. Radioimmunoassay and immunohistochemistry were emp...