Publications by authors named "Meghan E Vidt"

Background: This retrospective study investigated associations of rotator cuff muscle atrophy (MA) and fatty infiltration (FI) with glenoid morphology.

Methods: Patients with primary glenohumeral osteoarthritis who presented to Penn State Bone and Joint Institute's orthopaedic clinic from September 2002 to December 2019 as total shoulder arthroplasty (TSA) candidates were evaluated. MA was determined by the cross-sectional area of each rotator cuff muscle on pre-operative MR and CT scans.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Prior studies suggest that native (born to at least one deaf or signing parent) and non-native signers have different musculoskeletal health outcomes from signing, but the individual and combined biomechanical factors driving these differences are not fully understood. Such group differences in signing may be explained by the five biomechanical factors of American Sign Language that have been previously identified: ballistic signing, hand and wrist deviations, work envelope, muscle tension, and "micro" rests. Prior work used motion capture and surface electromyography to collect joint kinematics and muscle activations, respectively, from ten native and thirteen non-native signers as they signed for 7.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Medical provider's ability to detect, diagnose, and treat sport-related concussion has greatly improved in recent years. Although more is known about the biomechanical forces involved in concussion, it is still uncertain whether there are preventative measures athletes can take to prevent a sport-related concussion from occurring. The objective of this review was to determine if either neck size or neck strength is related to a decreased risk of sustaining a sport-related concussion.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Tendinopathies account for 30% of 102 million annual musculoskeletal injuries occurring annually in the United States. Current treatments, like dry needling, induce microdamage to promote healing but produce mixed success rates. Previously, we showed focused ultrasound can noninvasively create microdamage while preserving mechanical properties in ex vivo murine tendons.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The purpose of this narrative review was to assess work-related mild traumatic brain injury treatment approaches and outcomes. Literature indicates that incidence of work-related mild traumatic brain injury is high. Ability to return to work after injury is variable, with differences identified across industry sector, mechanisms of injury, sex, and timely treatment and referral.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Ability to return to work (RTW) is an important aspect of breast cancer that is limited for many survivors. With 90% survivorship in the USA, it is imperative that focus shifts toward the improvement of physical arm function to improve survivors' ability to RTW. This narrative review discusses the role of physical arm function and demographic disparities in breast cancer survivor RTW.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Rotator cuff tears in older adults affect shoulder function, with severe tears leading to more posterior and superior loading in the glenohumeral joint during tasks.
  • Researchers created eight musculoskeletal models to analyze how muscle forces change with varying tear severity across five functional tasks.
  • Findings revealed that as tear severity increased, muscles like the middle deltoid and teres minor significantly compensated, showing over 10% and 7% increases in force for severe tears, suggesting these muscles could be targeted for strengthening to prevent further injury.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Computational musculoskeletal modeling enhances our understanding of upper extremity biomechanics when physical testing is not possible.
  • A new model was developed that incorporates humeral head translation and ligaments, improving its biofidelity.
  • The model showed that the humerus moves upward with increased shoulder elevation, and its accuracy closely aligns with previous studies, suggesting it can better predict upper limb movements and help analyze conditions like shoulder injuries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Tendon injury is prevalent and costly in the United States, comprising 45% of the 66 million musculoskeletal injuries and costing $114 billion annually. Surgical and therapeutic methods, such as arthroscopic surgery, dry needling, and physical therapy, produce mixed success in reintroducing a healing response in tendinopathy due in part to inconsistent dosing and monitoring. Ultrasound is one therapeutic modality that has been shown to noninvasively induce bioeffects in tendon that may help promote healing.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The elastic modulus, or slope of the stress-strain curve, is an important metric for evaluating tissue functionality, particularly for load-bearing tissues such as tendon. The applied force can be tracked directly from a mechanical testing system and converted to stress using the tissue cross-sectional area; however, strain can only be calculated in post-processing by tracking tissue displacement from video collected during mechanical testing. Manual tracking of Verhoeff stain lines pre-marked on the tissue is time-consuming and highly dependent upon the user.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Tendon injuries are extremely common, resulting in mechanically weaker tendons that could lead to tendon rupture. Dry needling (DN) is widely used to manage pain and function after injury. However, DN is invasive and high inter-practitioner variability has led to mixed success rates.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Individuals fluent in sign language (signers) born to non-signing, non-deaf parents (non-natives) may have a greater injury risk than signers born to signing, deaf parents (natives). A comprehensive analysis of movement while signing in natives and non-natives has not been completed and could provide insight into the greater injury prevalence of non-natives.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine differences in upper extremity biomechanics between non-natives and natives.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Rotator cuff tears, affecting shoulder function, range in severity from small to massive, influencing how the shoulder joint bears load during activities.
  • Eight computational models were created to simulate varying rotator cuff tear severities and analyzed how these tears impacted joint contact forces during five functional tasks.
  • Results indicated that joint contact forces decreased with increased tear severity, particularly with the involvement of specific muscles, while remaining oriented within the glenoid rim to maintain joint stability, highlighting the need for further research on compensatory mechanisms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Around 30 million tendon injuries occur each year in the U.S., costing around $114 billion, with traditional treatments like dry needling showing inconsistent success.
  • Focused ultrasound (fUS) therapy utilizes bubble dynamics through a process called histotripsy to try and break down tough collagenous tissues like tendons, which are typically resistant to such mechanical disruption.
  • This study tested fUS on rat tendons and found that while bubbles were consistently created, not all samples sustained histological injury; successful disruption was most evident with specific pulse durations and treatment parameters, indicating potential for fUS in treating tendon injuries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Although body mass index (BMI) relates to body segment parameters (BSPs), unknowns persist over whether: 1) BSPs relate to BMI group classifications, 2) sex influences BMI/BSP relationships, and 3) simple anthropometric measures sufficiently predict BSPs. Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scans and anthropometric measures were obtained from 76 participants (33M, 43F) of varying body composition. Trunk, neck and head (TNH), arm, forearm and hand masses were obtained from DXA scans and center of mass locations (COM) estimated from geometric models.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Up to 81% of individuals who are fluent in sign language (signers) report pain. Non-native signers (with non-signing, non-deaf parents) report greater pain than natives (≥1 signing, deaf parent). The goal of this study was to develop a composite measure of injury risk (the modified Strain Index for signers) based on previously identified biomechanics unique to signers and examine scores across sub-groups of natives and non-natives.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A trailing joint control pattern, during which a single joint is rotated actively and the mechanical effect of this motion is used to move the other joints, was previously observed during simplified, laboratory-based tasks. We examined whether this simple pattern also underlies control of complex, unconstrained arm movements of daily activities. Six tasks were analyzed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Breast cancer survivorship is common (90% of women survive 5 or more years), but many women are not able to return to full function and well-being after treatment due to functional limitations, persistent pain, and inability to perform daily activities. Since each surgical reconstructive option (e.g.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The 12th International Shoulder Group (ISG) Conference was held at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA, from August 12-13, 2018, and was hosted by Dr. Melissa (Missy) Morrow of Mayo Clinic and Dr. Meghan Vidt of Pennsylvania State University.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Rotator cuff tear (RCT) in older adults may cause decreased muscle forces and disrupt the force balance at the glenohumeral joint, compromising joint stability. Our objective was to identify how increased RCT severity affects glenohumeral joint loading and muscle activation patterns using a computational model. Muscle volume measurements were used to scale a nominal upper limb model's peak isometric muscle forces to represent force-generating characteristics of an average older adult male.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Rotator cuff tears in older adults affect muscle forces and force distribution in the shoulder joint, potentially leading to decreased functional performance and increased risk of joint damage.
  • In a study of 14 older individuals, those with rotator cuff tears displayed lower peak joint contact forces in tasks like pulling and axilla washing compared to matched controls.
  • The findings indicate that individualized muscle force data is crucial for accurately predicting joint contact forces, suggesting that rotator cuff tears might lead to instability in the shoulder joint.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Repetitive movements and awkward postures are two persistent injury risk factors for grocery store cashiers. Due to the recent rise in popularity of environmentally-friendly grocery bagging options, current recommendations for cashiers are likely outdated. Correspondingly, the objective of this study was to examine the effects of cashier-specific work demands, workstation configuration, and container type on upper limb postures during typical job activities.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Scapular kinematics are important indicators of dyskinesis, often suggesting underlying shoulder pathology, but the influence of sex is unknown. This study's objective was to examine scapular kinematics in healthy males and females. Positions of surface-mounted reflective markers were tracked during arm elevation movements in 0°/30°/40°/60°/90°/120° planes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Understanding upper limb strength requirements for daily tasks is imperative for early detection of strength loss that may progress to disability due to age or rotator cuff tear. We quantified shoulder strength requirements for 5 upper limb tasks performed by 3 groups: uninjured young adults and older adults, and older adults with a degenerative supraspinatus tear prior to repair. Musculoskeletal models were developed for each group representing age, sex, and tear-related strength losses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF