Initial medical management of rotator cuff tears: a demographic analysis of surgical and nonsurgical treatment in the United States Medicare population.
These authors find that rotator cuff tears have a lifetime incidence between 25% and 40% in the United States. They evaluated the proportions of patients treated with nonoperative and operative modalities during an 8-year period (2005-2012) among patients with Medicare.
During the study period, 878,049 patients were identified; 397,116 patients had rotator cuff repair.
The proportion of patients treated initially with physical therapy dropped from 30.0% in 2005 to 13.2% in 2012
The proportion of patients who had rotator cuff repair increased from 33.8% to 40.4% from 2005 to 2012 (P < .001).
The surgical treatment of a chronic cuff tear is elective. In that many tears are minimally symptomatic it seems reasonable to see if non-operative management can be helpful. This post is relevant, especially in light of the high rate of failure of repair surgery and the results with non-operative management:
42% failure rate for rotator cuff repair - are the patient's genes at fault?
Is surgery better than non-operative treatment for non-traumatic rotator cuff tears?
Rotator cuff tears - non-operative and arthroscopic management
Rotator cuff tears - non-operative and arthroscopic management
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