The Impact of Short-Term Change on Rotator Cuff Treatment Decisions

Dr. Justin Dunaway // #ClinicalTuesday // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Spine Division lead faculty Justin Dunaway takes a deep dive into a series of three studies tracking the same cohort of patients over 10 years and what they say about the importance of short term changes!

Take a listen to the episode or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog.

If you're looking to learn more about our Persistent Pain Management course or our online physical therapy courses, check our entire list of continuing education courses for physical therapy including our physical therapy certifications by checking out our website. Don't forget about all of our FREE eBooks, prebuilt workshops, free CEUs, and other physical therapy continuing education on our Resources tab.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

JUSTIN DUNAWAYAll right, team, good morning. I am Justin Dunaway, lead faculty with the Institute of Clinical Excellence, coming at you live from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another Clinical Tuesday. I am lead faculty for Total Spine Thrust and also our Persistent Pain Comprehensive Management course. 32nd cohort just began yesterday. So if you're thinking about jumping in that will the registration will remain open for another day or so So if you're thinking about it, go ahead and take a look But enough about that. Let's get into today's topic today we're gonna talk about full thickness a traumatic rotator cuff tears and looking at physical therapy or Surgery and what what kind of predicts that stuff? and it's really cool because it's a series of three studies over a decade that looked at the same same kind of cohort of humans and And while I'm going to talk a bunch about these three studies, realize that this really is more than a story about rehab for rotator cuff tears. This is really a story about the importance of our ability to demonstrate within session and between session change, early, often, and frequently. And at Ice, we often hear that we are obsessed with incessant change. We are obsessed with our ability to show short-term changes. And I couldn't agree with that sentence more. Like, totally. I am absolutely obsessed with that. The second half of that, though, which I don't agree with, is that short-term change, within-session change, those things don't matter. What we're really talking about is regression of mean or natural history. And short-term change doesn't predict long-term change. And I couldn't disagree with those sentences more on lots of different levels. But I think that the story I'm about to tell, the three studies that we're about to walk through, give some of the best evidence and support for the need for short-term and within-session change, for at least one of the many reasons why this stuff is so important. So let's dive in. First study, study number one, the effectiveness of physical therapy in treating atraumatic full-thickness rotator cuff tears, multi-center prospective cohort study by Kuhn and Dunn, 2013. Mouthful. But basically what they did is they took a whole bunch of humans, 452 of them, that had full-thickness chronic degenerative rotator cuff tears, and all of them got six weeks of physical therapy. And then at the end of the six weeks, they were asked, you know, how are you doing? And they got one of three options. They could stay cured, in which case they were done, and we'll just check in at 12 weeks, and then at a couple time points over the next two years, or they're improved, in which case they would get another six weeks of physical therapy, or no better, and then they could opt for surgery. And then at the 12-week mark, the people that were left, that weren't cured in the first six, asked them the same question. If they were cured, awesome. If they were anything but cured, they were offered surgery, and then tracked over the next two years. The physical therapy protocol, I couldn't get my hands on the full version of Appendix A that went into detail about what they actually did, but in the study, in the methodology they just talked about doing the physical therapy was range of motion, was postural control, was scapular training, was mobilizations, was general strength training stuff. And I've got some thoughts on that and we'll dive into here in just a second. But the outcome here is what they found is that less than 25%, okay, full thickness chronic degenerative rotator cuff tears, less than 25% of the 452 people in the trial at the end of the 12 weeks needed surgery. At the six week mark, only 6% of people opted for surgery. At the 12 week mark, that number was up to 15. And then over the next two years, a few more trickled in and that went up to like 24%. So at gut shot, 75% of people with full thickness rotator cuff tears went on to have excellent results in pain, disability, range of motion, strength, functional stuff, and went totally back to life. That's awesome. That's huge, right? The second piece The thing I want to think about here, though, is I think that number could be a bit better, right? I'm going to make an assumption that once we dive into the exercise protocols there, were they really doing strength stuff? Were they really looking at multi-joint movements, overhead presses, rows, pushes, horizontal presses, things like that, and dosing them appropriately for strength? you know, thinking about low or high sets, low reps, two to three minute rest at roughly 80% of their calculated one rep max, or are they doing like three sets of 15 with a band? And call it strength. I have no idea. My assumption is that we probably could be a bit more aggressive with exercise, and I bet that number could get a bit better. But 75% is awesome. So let's run with that. And the conclusion of this first study, which is super important, That if I'm just gonna read the quote if a patient avoids surgery in the first 12 weeks He or she is unlikely to undergo surgery at a later time point up to 12 up to two years So this is the first point here if the patient doesn't opt for surgery in the first 12 weeks They're probably not going to get surgery so our ability to to show them functional improvements in the first six, in the first 12 weeks, is absolutely huge. Because if they don't feel like they need surgery at the end of the 12 weeks, they're not going to get it probably ever. And when we think about conservative management versus surgery, both these things can be effective. But there is massive risk to surgery, right? There's massive financial risk. It's super expensive. And then thinking about the risks of anesthesia, of something going wrong during the surgery, of infection, of interactions, adverse events with the medications, opioid addiction. All of these things are risks of surgery that don't exist in conservative management. Okay, so that's the first study. If you don't opt for surgery in the first 12 weeks, it's unlikely that you're going to. 75% of humans got totally back to life without needing surgery. Study number two, predictors of failure of non-operative treatment of chronic symptomatic full thickness rotator cuff tears. Same research team. This was published in 2016. Again, looking at the same cohort of 452 individuals, This time what they wanted to see is, okay, 25% of you failed conservative management, failed physical therapy. Why? Is there anything in there? Is there anything about you that predicts whether you will or won't do well with physical therapy? And this was really cool. So they looked at all the patient demographics. They looked at age, they looked at sex, they looked at pain, severity of the tear, disability, chronicity, activity levels. They looked at work status and education and handedness and really everything under the sun. And what they found, the first thing they found is that structural factors were not predictive at all. Tear didn't matter, pain didn't matter, disability didn't matter, what your MRI didn't look like. None of that stuff predicted whether you needed surgery or not. The number one most powerful and really only significant predictor of whether you went on to need surgery or not for your full thickness rotator cuff tear was belief that physical therapy wouldn't help you. That was it. If you believe physical therapy would help you, you succeeded, you didn't need surgery. If you didn't believe that, then you opted out and went for surgery. And then smoking status moved the needle just a little bit, which makes sense. If you're smoking, your body is widely inflamed. Things heal slower. Your pain systems are far more sensitive. And then the other thing that was a very small predictor was activity levels. If you had higher activity levels, you were slightly more likely to opt for surgery early. And that makes sense too, right? My shoulder hurts. I can't do all the things I want to do. I'm still trying to do them. Things aren't getting better quick enough. Give me the magic bullet. The important thing here, again, one, structure was not predictive. Two, the only real strong predictor was your belief in physical therapy. Now, this is where it gets interesting, right? If that is the thing that determines whether you get surgery in the first six to 12 weeks, or that's the thing that determines whether you get surgery, and most humans are gonna make that decision within the first six to 12 weeks, you cannot make the argument that within session change and short term changes don't matter and probably aren't the most important thing there is, right? Because I cannot, if the thing that determines whether you need surgery or not, whether you get into that MRI tube, whether you get in the OR suite, whether you're getting those injections, pills, things like that, is your belief that physical therapy can help you, I cannot think of a more powerful way to foster that relief than having some tools in my toolbox that when you walk in the door, very quickly, I can modulate your pain, I can change your pain, your pain pressure threshold, turn on painfully inhibited muscles, gain some access to proprioception, and then get out into the gym and do some things that actually build capacity in humans, and demonstrate that thing within session, and then session after session after session. Short-term change and within-session change are the things that get patients to believe in physical therapy. And belief in physical therapy is the thing that keeps the patient out of the OR. Simple as that. That is the most important tool we have to foster those beliefs. Okay, study number three. This one just came out like last month. The predictors of surgery for symptomatic, atraumatic, full thickness rotator cuff tears change over time. Same research team, again, looking at these same humans that were in this study. Now this is tracking them down 10 years later. The first thing that pops out is that at the 10 year mark, only 27% of these people went on to get surgery. So you think about that, at the two-year mark, it was around 24%. So just a few more people kicked into the surgery over the next two, between two years, year two and year 10. Most of them, over half, opted for surgery before the six-month mark, and then the rest of them slowly trickled in over the next 10 years, with it kind of being less and less each year down the road. At the six-month mark, And everything prior to that, the most predictive thing, again, whether you need surgery or not, was belief in physical therapy and nothing else, right? So those beliefs are gonna be powerful all the way up to the six month mark. Everything we can do in that window to convince patients. that this is the path they need is gonna be the thing that keeps them off the other path. Beyond six months, it doesn't switch to structure, it doesn't switch to pain and disability and any of that stuff. The only two predictors beyond six months were if you were on worker's comp, and again, if you reported high levels of activity. Now this is super important too, right? Because okay, we're six months, we're a year, we're two years, we're five years out. We've done physical therapy, it didn't work, we've kind of forgot about it, that's off the table. And now, the stuff that's really bugging us is the fact that, okay, we're still having trouble at work, we're on workers' comp, we're kind of in that system, we still have all these activities that we want to do that we can't do the way we want to do them, now it's time to do something else. It's important to realize that overall, at the 10-year mark, 70-ish percent of humans, again, didn't need the surgery. And this is an interesting bullet point, too, because one of the things that you'll frequently hear is that, great, people do well with conservative management for rotator cuff tears. But if you don't repair it anyway, you set the patient up for degenerative changes, arthritis, problems down the road. What this study showed us is that the 10-year mark, the 70% of humans that did well with conservative management 10 years ago in that six to 12-week PT window, All of them were successful. And the success that they gained 10 years ago didn't decline over time. They didn't have more disability. They didn't have increased pain or arthritis or things like that. Their gains stuck. And this is one of a few studies that look at conservative management for rotator cuff tears, track them out over long periods of time, and show that there is no negative mechanical effects from not repairing that thing. So, the important stuff here, the key clinical factors here, is that team, at the end of the day, beliefs and expectations are the foundation. They're everything. They're the thing that drive the decisions that patients make, right? And if we don't have the ability to demonstrate change to our patient, if we don't have the ability to show them, not just tell them, But show them time and time again, ruthlessly, within session and between sessions, slowly building up functional outcomes, session after session after session, they're not going to buy this. And if they don't believe in what they're doing, if they don't believe in physical therapy, if they don't think that this is the thing, that's the stuff that determines, OK, am I going to get shots? Am I going to be taking pain medications? Am I going to end up in the OR suite? We need, what this research tells me is that we really need to drill down on our ability to have tools in the toolbox that create quick, transient changes in pain, range of motion, muscle activation. And I get that that's transient, but what we're doing is we're open a window. And then once that window is open, we absolutely have to jump through it, get right into the gym and start doing the large functional movements that build capacity in humans. And then be ruthless about your comparable measures, your functional stuff between sessions and your objective stuff within sessions. and make sure that multiple times every session, you're showing patients change. In every session, when they walk in the door, you can show them change over time. This is where you started. This is where we were after the first week. This is where we were after the second week. The better we get at that, the better we get at demonstrating change in the moment and showing them incremental change over time in the short term, the better our odds of keeping these patients out of the surgical suite. If the only thing that separates these two groups, physical therapy or going under the knife, is their belief in the power of what we're doing in the clinic, then we have to invest everything we have in our ability to demonstrate those changes. All right, team, hope you're half as excited about these three studies as I am. I think it's a really cool thing to look at and then track these patients over the last 10 years. If you got any questions, throw them in the chat. Have an awesome day in the clinic, and I look forward to seeing you out there.

OUTROHey, thanks for tuning in to the PT on Ice daily show. If you enjoyed this content, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Instagram at the Institute of Clinical Excellence. If you're interested in getting plugged into more ice content on a weekly basis while earning CUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at ptonice.com. While you're there, sign up for our Hump Day Hustling newsletter for a free email every Wednesday morning with our top five research articles and social media posts that we think are worth reading. Head over to ptonice.com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.