Rotator Cuff Slight Glitch

I was surprised to hear from Dr Wong, my surgeon, that he wanted to see me ASAP and not wait for my next followup. He said it appears one of my anchors had shifted and possibly come loose. As a bit of background, I got a double-row repair. This is more secure and is a good idea when you have a sever tear like mine because it is extra support.

This picture is a Dr. Rodney Wong original with captions added by yours truly. The rotator cuff is like a stretchy sheet, and after the tear it is pulled back from where it is supposed to be attached to the head of the upper arm bone (humerus). During the repair it gets stretched back to where it should be and then stitched down to anchors into the bone. In my case he used six. There are 5 shown in the figure but it really is six. There is extra length available from the sutures. In a second row, they are attached to two more anchors in the cross pattern shown. Unfortunately one of those second anchors shifted.

We could have just not worried about it because this is like a belt and suspenders and one of the suspenders is loose. But Dr. Wong’s judgement was to go back in and check with the arthroscopic camera and clean things up if necessary. So he did that, yesterday. Two weeks after my first surgery I had to have another one. But it was pretty minor and went well. He confirmed the repair is nice and tight and healing nicely. He removed the loose anchor and replaced it with a new one.

Even though my first choice would be not to go through with this, it was nice to get confirmation that all is well and healing is on schedule. He thinks this will not set my rehab back at all.