Exercise, surgery effective in shoulder injury

Graded exercise training is considered a better treatment option for rotator cuff injury than surgery. Researchers from Herning Hospital in Denmark are more reluctant to recommend surgery in patients with rotator cuff injury. Despite unconvincing evidence supporting the superiority of arthroscopic decompression surgery over exercise training, surgical treatment of rotator cuff syndrome has been widely adopted. The researchers compared the effect of graded physiotherapeutic exercise training of the rotator cuff versus arthroscopic decompression in 90 patients with shoulder pain. A total of 84 patients completed the 1-year follow-up period - 41 people in the surgery group and 43 in the exercise group. Improvements in shoulder function and reductions in pain were not markedly different between those who had surgery and those who exercised. Larger studies are needed with an adequate number of patients to permit subgroup analyses before recommendations are made about who might benefit from arthroscopic surgery and who might benefit from graded exercise training.