Full-thickness rotator cuff tears

Abstract

Rotator cuff tears are the most commonly encountered shoulder disorder. They can be degenerative or traumatic. Degenerative rotator cuff tears have a closely age-related prevalence of between 15 and 51 %. In individuals over 65 years of age, 50 % of rotator cuff tears are bilateral. Only one-third of these lesions cause pain. A recent study of 588 patients with unilateral shoulder pain demonstrated that 35.5 % of patients with a symptomatic tear also had an asymptomatic rotator cuff lesion in the contralateral shoulder; patients with a partial tear or intact rotator cuff and shoulder pain instead had much lower percentages of full-thickness tears in the asymptomatic contralateral shoulder: 4.3 and 0.5 %, respectively. Finally, the symptomatic tears were, on average, 30 % larger than the asymptomatic ones. The development of pain and limitation in daily activities was, in fact, associated with expansion of the lesion, understood not only as an increase in the size of a full-thickness lesion but also as conversion of a partial lesion into a full-thickness one.