Outcomes Following the Repair of Isolated Supraspinatus Repairs versus those with Concurrent Subscapularis Repairs (242)

OBJECTIVES: While rotator cuff tears often require repair of the supraspinatus, patients can also have a concurrent tear of the subscapularis requiring repair. Previous smaller studies have shown good clinical outcomes following the repair of the subscapularis and rotator cuff during the same procedure.(1) The purpose of this study was to compare clinical outcome measures between patients who had isolated supraspinatus repairs versus those who had a supraspinatus tear with a concurrent subscapularis repair. METHODS: A retrospective review of 166 patients who underwent arthroscopic supraspinatus repair with or without a concurrent subscapularis repair between 2013-2018 with a minimum of one-year follow up was performed. Patients were separated into two groups based on their treatment: 100 had an isolated supraspinatus repair (SP) and 66 had both a supraspinatus and subscapularis repair (SB). The primary outcome was revision rotator cuff repair. Secondary outcomes were objective measures such as range of motion (ROM) and strength testing, including flexion (FF), external rotation (ER), and internal rotation (IR), as well as patient-reported outcome measures (PROs) including visual analog pain scale (VAS) and subjective shoulder value (SSV). Outcomes were compared using the Mann- Whitney Test and Fisher’s Exact Test with p<0.05, as the data were not parametric (SPSS, IBM). RESULTS: There was no significant difference in the rate of revision surgery required following isolated supraspinatus repair versus those with a subscapularis repair. Additionally, there were no significant differences between groups for all PROs, all ROM parameters, and all strength parameters (all p > 0.05) (Table 1). CONCLUSIONS: The data from this study demonstrated that patients who require a subscapularis repair at the time of their rotator cuff repair can expect similar short term outcomes to those patients who only required repair of their supraspinatus.