Thursday, February 7, 2019

How long does it take to recover from a rotator cuff repair?

When Do Patients Return to Previous Daily Activity After Arthroscopic Rotator Cuff Repair?

These authors sought to characterize the functional recovery after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair in 135 patients (mean age 60 years) (45 small-sized, 45 in medium-sized, and 45 in large-to massive-sized tears). The mean age was 60 years.

Twenty-seven shoulders (20%) had failure of the repair on MRI taken 9 months after surgery. 

Patients experienced the average recovery of 

low-level front-of-the-body activities at 2 months
high-level ROM front-of-the-body activities at 3 months
high-level ROM behind-the-back activities at 9 months
simple strength-related activities at10 months
and sports/leisure activities at 14 months

Patients with large-to-massive tears were delayed from some activities compared with patients with small tears (10 ± 0 versus 7 ± 1 for washing back, p = 0.010; 11 ± 0 versus 10 ± 0 for lifting 5 kg, p = 0.020; 15 ± 0 versus 13 ± 0 for sports/leisure).

Patients with retears, compared with intact healing, had a longer time to return to washing hair (3 ± 2 versus 3 ± 1, p = 0.007), combing (4 ± 3 versus 2 ± 1, p = 0.002), washing the back (10 ± 3 versus 8 ± 3, p = 0.034), and sports/leisure (15 ± 3 versus 14 ± 3, p = 0.010). 



The authors concluded that it took patients an average of 14 months to recover their daily motion after surgery. Tear size and retear affected only the recovery period of high-level motion activities and sports/leisure.

===
We have a new set of shoulder youtubes about the shoulder, check them out at this link.

Be sure to visit "Ream and Run - the state of the art" regarding this radically conservative approach to shoulder arthritis at this link and this link

Use the "Search" box to the right to find other topics of interest to you.