One of the most important factors leading to a successful healing of rotator cuff tear is good bone quality to secure the suture anchor in the bone for a stable fixation. However, rotator cuff tear are commonly found in elderly patients, and their proximal humerus often shows osteoporosis or cystic lesions. Especially when the transosseous repair prevails for a torn rotator cuff, a weak metaphyseal cancellous bone is often the case, which associated with difficulty in stable fixation of the lateral row suture anchor. In this situation, we were able to augment the lateral row fixation with polymethylmethacrylate bone cement. Although there is a concern of disturbance in the blood flow and healing potential, our case showed good clinical results with respect to healing. If we suspect a weak fixation of the lateral row suture anchor, bone cement seems to be a good option for augmentation. Rotator cuff tear is one of the most common causes of shoulder pain. When conservative treatments are non-responsive, surgical repair is usually recommended for active patients. Arthroscopic repair using a suture anchor is the mainstay of its surgical treatment, and a recent trend for repair of torn cuff tendon shifted the attention away from the traditional single row repair with open technique to arthroscopic double row or transosseous equivalent repair.
1)The healing or retear of repaired cuff tendon depends on several factors, including the biological condition surrounding the repaired tendon, biomechanical properties of repair construct, design of suture anchor, and bone quality. In fact, most degenerative rotator cuff tears are found in elderly patients, and considering the age distribution, these tears are commonly overlapped with osteoporosis.2,3) Since the poor local bone density in elderly patients might lead to the loosening of the suture anchor and may compromise the healing of repaired tendon; 3) thus, the enhancement of fixation quality can be more important in these patients than other factors.
2,3)Several techniques have been introduced to improve the fixation strength of the suture anchor in the osteoporotic bone.
4-7)However, in previous studies, the augmentation of suture anchor strength were conducted only on cadavers, and thus, clinical cases regarding augmentation techniques have rarely been reported.The present report is a case of rotator cuff repair in which failed lateral row anchor was augmented by polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) bone cement.
Case ReportA 59-year-old female patient visited our outpatient clinic due to an unresponsive conservative treatment of more than three months for pain in the right shoulder. Her shoulder pain began more than a year ago, which had gotten worse and aggravated four months prior to this visit. Conservative treatment consisted of pain medication, physiotherapy, and steroid injection. There was no prior history of trauma, surgery, or other inflammatory