About this talk
This is the introduction to a talk on failed rotator cuff repairs, given by Dr Kenneth Cutbush at the Royal North Shore Shoulder Symposium in February 2020.
About the symposium
A shoulder symposium is a meeting held over a day or two and built around a single region of the body, with invited talks grouped into themes and time set aside for discussion. Sessions on complications, and on operations that have not gone to plan, are a standing part of such programmes. Those are the cases that are hardest to manage and the ones least well covered by a textbook, so they are where a room of surgeons comparing their own experience is most valuable.
Why the subject matters
A rotator cuff repair aims to reattach torn tendon to bone and to have it heal there. Not all repairs heal, and a shoulder that remains painful or weak after a repair is a recognised clinical problem rather than an unusual one. Talks of this kind are directed at surgeons and allied health professionals and deal with how such shoulders are assessed and what the options are.
The considerations generally include whether the tendon has in fact failed to heal or whether the symptoms have another cause, how much tendon and muscle remains and whether it is repairable, the condition of the joint surfaces, and the age and functional demands of the patient. The available options range from continued non-surgical management and rehabilitation, through revision repair and tendon transfer, to reverse total shoulder replacement where the cuff cannot be reconstructed. Individual results vary.
Related information
- For patients, our rotator cuff tear page
- Our rotator cuff repair page, which sets out the operation in accessible terms
- Our post on rehabilitation after a rotator cuff repair
- Our rehabilitation page