Clinical Outcome of Symptoms Like CRPS after Rotator Cuff Repair

Abstract

Our previous report suggested that our scoring system, CRPS score, may be useful for the evaluation of the degree and clinical course of symptoms or signs like CRPS.
The purpose of this study is to examine the clinical outcome of symptoms or signs like CRPS after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair and the relation between CRPS score and JOA score. We examined 13 patients (men, 10; women, 3; mean age, 64 years old) who exhibited symptoms like CRPS after surgery. The mean follow-up period was 13 months.We determined whether the patients exhibited sensory disturbance, abnormal color, swelling, stiffness, or sweat disturbance and scored 1 point for each sign. CRPS score was calculated as the sum of these points. We examined the CRPS score at 3 weeks and 6 months after ARCR and the JOA score before ARCR and at 6 months after ARCR. The patients could be classified into 3 groups depending on this score at 3 weeks after surgery: group A(2 points; 5 cases), group B(3 points; 4 cases), and group C(4 points; 4 cases). The CRPS scores of all groups improved, and the clinical outcome in group A was better significantly than that in groups B and C. The JOA scores of all groups improved too, but there were no significant differences among the 3 groups.
In this study, similar to previous reports, no relation was observed between symptoms or signs like CRPS and JOA score after rotator cuff repair.
The clinical outcome of symptoms or signs like CRPS could be evaluated by using CRPS score. The patients with CRPS score of ≤ 2 points at 3 weeks after ARCR showed a better outcome than those with a score of ≥ 3 points. The results revealed that if the CRPS score was low, clinical outcome would be getting better.