Matthew DiPaola 
The Tough Cases and Lasting Impacts Unfortunately, he still has limitations: mostly weakness and pain with lifting beyond 10 or 20 lbs. He also has difficulty supporting his weight on the involved arm. These impairments are likely permanent. We have talked about this on multiple occasions. Sadly, I cannot make everyone 100% better. These are … Read more
A recent study in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery compared outcomes of patients who had rotator cuff surgery based on how faithful they were with wearing their sling.
They asked 50 patients undergoing rotator cuff repair to wear an abduction sling for the first
This is one of the most frequent questions that I get from patients. And it’s not an easy one to answer. Understanding the Complexity Of Shoulder Surgery Recovery New Research Provides Insight Recently a team at The Hospital for Joint Diseases led by one of my shoulder fellowship mentors Dr. Laith Jazrawi produced a study … Read more
More money, more problems
The Notorius B.I.G.
There is a class of health research focused on relating socioeconomic status with overall health outcomes. In most cases if you have more money, you have better health.
No doubt about it, rotator cuff tears can be confusing. It’s not that you can’t understand the idea of having a tear in your tendon. That’s easy.
It’s just that treating them can be counterintutive: some get better with therapy and others don’t. Some cause significant pain and others don’t. Some need surgery and others don’t.
As a shoulder and elbow surgeon a lot of operations that I perform involve implanting hardware to help solve someone’s problem. Examples of hardware include plates and screws, joint replacement implants and arthroscopic anchors.
When someone asks whether hardware needs to be removed in the future they usually are referring to plates and screws that help hold fractures together.
I think both doctors and patients use them, but in different ways. How Patients Judge Competence I was thinking about shortcuts that patients use to help them decide on whether their doctor is competent or not. This is different from how they choose their doctors — that’s another topic. I mean after the patient has … Read more
Truth #1: Shoulder Arthritis Often Affects Both Arms For a given patient, shoulder arthritis in the ball and socket portion of the joint usually occurs in both arms. We don’t totally understand why this is. There is likely some genetic predisposition that we have yet to fully figure out. But it’s true: if you’ve got … Read more
Bone Loss Below the 25% Threshold This new study takes things a step further. It shows that results after instability surgery tend to be worse in direct proportion to the amount of bone loss one has even below the 25% threshold. This study is extremely interesting. What we are finding out now with the use … Read more
