Efficacy of bone marrow stimulation in arthroscopic repair of full thickness rotator cuff tears: a meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: To conduct a meta-analysis to compare the curative effect of treating the full thickness tear of the rotator cuff using the arthroscopic bone marrow stimulation (BMS) technology and provide the evidence for its extensive clinical application. METHODS: A systematic literature search was conducted to evaluate the studies on comparison of the curative effect of routine surgery with or without BMS on rotator cuff tear in the major medical databases. The literature was screened according to the inclusion and exclusion standards, and the quality assessment was conducted, then Review Manager 5.3 software was used for meta-analysis. RESULTS: Eight articles were eligible for inclusion. There were no statistically significant differences between BMS and control groups for overall outcome scores (P > 0.05). Except the Constant score of BMS group was significantly higher than that of the control group at the third follow-up month (P = 0.007). However, the postoperative re-tear rate of the BMS group was significantly lower than that of the control group (P < 0.001). Furthermore, we made a subgroup analysis and found that the postoperative Constant and UCLA score had no significant differences among all groups (P > 0.05), and the re-tear rates of the BMS groups were lower than those of the control groups (P = 0.001, P = 0.0002). CONCLUSIONS: BMS technology has no significant influence on the postoperative clinical result of patients. However, it can obviously promote the tendon-to-bone healing of the rotator cuff and decrease the re-tear rate, which provides evidence for the clinical treatment.