A sprained shoulder is a common sports injury that can occur with a single swing of the tennis racket or a strange fall on the field. While putting the bone back into the socket may seem like a simple solution, the reality is more complicated.
Sometimes the injury may require surgery, and an inappropriate surgical approach and healing can make the injury worse. This puts people at greater risk for future joint movement or disease later in life.
To address this issue, multidisciplinary researchers from the University of Pittsburgh will use an award from the National Institutes of Health to explore an individual approach that could improve surgery outcomes and help athletes to avoid lasting impact.
Richard Debski, PhD, professor of bioengineering, and Albert Lin, MD, associate professor of orthopedic surgery, will lead a study to improve the assessment and repair of injuries using quantitative methods to quantify the size and location of the lesion. measuring injury.
“Repair surgery has a failure rate of up to 15 percent, and these issues lead to instability and additional disorders that limit the patient’s ability to return to an active life,” said Debski, who runs the orthopedic robotic laboratory at the Swanson Pitt School of Engineering. .
“Our research shows that this damage is affecting an area more than previously thought and shows that the location and size varies from person to person,” he explained. “This suggests that an individualized approach may be more effective in treating dislocation injuries and improving surgical outcomes. “
Movement injuries involve a sheet of soft material – called a capsule – that surrounds and stabilizes the joint. The high recurrence rate in capsular injuries can enlarge the damaged area, making successful recovery even more difficult.
In this study, Debski and Lin use a standard artificial insemination system to move a cadaveric shoulder and perform clinical trials similar to assess joint stability. They use an optical tracking system to measure permanent dislocation or injury after each movement.
A surgeon will then perform a more detailed repair procedure with the location and size of the injury presented, and the results will be evaluated and compared with conventional procedures.
“Despite significant advances in surgical techniques to address shoulder instability over the past 20 years, the failure rate remains unseenly high with a real socio-economic impact, particularly in the patient population. young people, “said Lin.” Drs. Debski and I found that injury patterns vary greatly between patients; therefore, the key to improving recurrence rates could be individual, anatomic surgeries specifically designed to treat the specific pattern injury rather than the conventional one-size-fits-all approach. for all. . “
As the standard optical tracking system cannot be used in a clinical setting, the team will develop a new strategy to collect specific measurements for patients.
“We will use an MRI technique to identify the injury and compare it to the quantitative patterns from our cadaveric model to see if there is a correlation between the data before and after surgery repair,” Debski said.
The findings of this study may confirm the need for an individualized approach to capsular injury repair and may lead to a clinical trial.
“With this personalized approach, we hope to reduce the number of failed capsular therapies,” Debski said. “In the long run, we also hope to reduce the development of osteoarthritis in young adults, and ultimately, help these athletes make a healthy return to their favorite sport.”