Outcomes and Survivorship After Arthroscopic Treatment of Glenohumeral Arthritis: A Systematic Review
When possible, treatment of shoulder joint osteoarthritis usually includes non-operative interventions, but when these provide insufficient relief, the most common course of action is to proceed with a shoulder joint replacement which can greatly restrict activity in younger populations. This has raised interest in temporizing arthroscopic procedures. Given the large number of arthroscopic procedures used to treat shoulder arthritis and their varying outcomes, this study was conducted to collect and review all current literature on this topic and compare their outcomes to one another. Overall, 8 studies including 371 were found to match the author’s criteria. After carefully analyzing the outcomes, the authors found that there were a wide range of differences in whether someone would later obtain a shoulder replacement ranging anywhere from 4-42%. The time someone needed to proceed with a shoulder replacement also differed greatly from 9-56 months. However, they found that overall arthroscopic treatment of shoulder osteoarthritis provided improvements in shoulder range of motion and patient-reported outcomes with minimal complications. This information could be useful to surgeons who are considering using temporizing arthroscopic surgeries in carefully selected patients.
