Long-term follow-up of arthroscopic rotator cuff repair.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to perform a case series assessing the clinical outcomes of patients with at least 9 years of follow-up after an all-arthroscopic rotator cuff repair.

Method: We performed a review of all of the arthroscopic rotator cuff repairs done by the senior author from 1991 to 2001. Study patients identified were contacted and evaluated by the first author and the senior author. A thorough in-office shoulder examination was completed and a current University of California, Los Angeles shoulder score was obtained during the evaluation.

Results: Seven hundred seventy-two patients were in the initial database. Forty-eight patients were identified from the database after inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied. Follow-up ranged from 110 to 223 months, averaging 151.7 months. All repairs were single row and received an arthroscopic subacromial decompression. We identified 33 all-arthroscopic rotator cuff repairs for follow-up in 24 patients included in the study. The mean University of California, Los Angeles score at follow-up was 31.8, with 87.7% of patients having excellent and good outcomes. Of the patients, 18 showed excellent results, 11 good, 2 fair, and 2 poor. All the patients presented with no loss of motion.

Conclusions: Our data suggest that patients maintain good outcomes 10 years after the index surgery. These findings are comparable to the outcomes reported in short-term and midterm follow-up studies.

Level Of Evidence: Level IV, therapeutic case series.