Effect of Teres Minor Fatty Infiltration on Rotator Cuff Repair Outcomes

Editorial Commentary: Teres Minor Fatty Infiltration on Magnetic Resonance Imaging—Have You Considered It, and Does It Matter When Performing Rotator Cuff Repairs?

“…Recently, Vidt et al 2 reported that patients with rotator cuff tears have more FI in the teres minor as seen on MRI, which is in line with the findings of Kim et al, 1 whereas Kikukawa et al 3 claimed that the teres minor muscle undergoes hypertrophy at least if there is an infraspinatus tear. Further complicating the issue, Melis et al 4 have reported that the teres minor appears normal as seen on MRI or computed tomography in more than 90% of patients with rotator cuff tears.…”

“…Therefore it appears that there is a need to perform future research dedicated to the teres minor in patients with rotator cuff problems. Personally, it feels good to have read the research of Kim et al 1 because like most surgeons, I have not paid much attention to the appearance of the teres minor when performing rotator cuff surgery.…”

Bridging Graft in Irreparable Massive Rotator Cuff Tears: Autogenic Biceps Graft versus Allogenic Dermal Patch Graft

“… 24) Moreover, since only the teres minor can roll as the external rotator in the case of massive rotator cuff tears, including supraspinatus and infraspinatus tears, it can be considered to contribute significantly to the range of shoulder joint movement. 25) Although we are not aware of any studies evaluating the effects of the teres minor on healing failure in rotator cuff repair, a previous study 26) reported that patients with higher fatty degeneration of the teres minor that received a reverse total shoulder arthroplasty had less desirable clinical results. Therefore, extensive fatty degeneration of the teres minor may have affected the clinical and anatomic outcomes in our study.…”

A Rotator Cuff Tear Concomitant With Shoulder Stiffness Is Associated With a Lower Retear Rate After 1-Stage Arthroscopic Surgery

“…28 A propensity score matching study reported that 51 patients who had fatty infiltration of the teres minor without tear involvement showed significantly improved visual analog scale scores for pain and functional scores and no significant differences compared with a control group that had no fatty infiltration of the teres minor. 25 Thus, the authors concluded that rotator cuff repair could be performed without a great deal of concern irrespective of the presence of fatty infiltration in the teres minor. Notwithstanding these undetermined correlations between various factors and the outcomes of rotator cuff repair, the differences between the stiff group and nonstiff group in our study in preoperative symptom duration, mediolateral tear size, tendon involvement, and fatty infiltration of the subscapularis and teres minor could have affected the outcomes.…”