Risk Factors for Recurrent Shoulder Dislocation Arthroscopically Managed with Absorbable Knotless Anchors

Purpose. To evaluate the clinical outcome and risk factors for recurrent dislocation after arthroscopic stabilization with absorbable knotless anchor. Methods. We treated 197 patients affected by anterior shoulder instability, either traumatic or atraumatic with the same arthroscopic suture technique. We recorded age at surgery and number and type of dislocations (traumatic/atraumatic). Of the 197 patients, 127 (65.4%) were examined with a mean follow-up of 5.6 years (range: 25–108 months). Eighty-one shoulders were evaluated with the Rowe score and 48 with the Simple Shoulder Test (SST). Results. The mean Rowe score was 90.8, while the mean SST score was 10.9. Recurrence occurred in 10 cases (7.7%) but only in 4 cases was atraumatic, which reduces the real recurrence rate to 3.1%. Patients with recurrence were significantly younger at surgery than patients who did not relapse ( P=0.040 ). Moreover, neither the number ( P=0.798 ) nor the type of shoulder instability ( P=0.751 ), or the amount of glenoid bone loss ( P=0.184 ) significantly affected the probability of recurrence. Conclusions. In a patient population with involuntary monodirectional anterior shoulder instability, use of absorbable knotless anchor was reliable and resulted in a good outcome. In this series the statistical significant risk factors for recurrent dislocation were age of patient.