shoulder synovitis does not affect pain after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair

Background: the goal of this study was to determine if there is an association between glenohumeral synovitis andearly post-operative pain after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair.methods: fifty patients with symptomatic rotator cuff tears were prospectively enrolled prior to rcr. baseline asesscore, vas pain score, forward elevation, and external rotation were recorded. intra-operatively, synovitis was gradedon a scale of zero to six as based on a previously validated scoring system. vas pain scores were obtained frompatients post-operatively on days one through 14, week 6, and 3 months.results: average intra-operative synovitis score was 2.4 ± 1.6. no significant correlation was found between synovitisscore and pre-operative forward elevation (p=0.171), external rotation (p=0.126), vas pain (p=0.623), or ases(p=0.187) scores. no significant correlation was found between synovitis score and post-operative vas pain level atany time point. there was a moderate correlation between both pre-operative vas pain and ases scores and postoperativevas pain in the first post-operative week. workers’ compensation patients had worse pain at 3 months postoperativelycompared to non-workers compensation patients (p=0.038).conclusion: this study reveals that macroscopically assessed glenohumeral synovitis does not have any significantcorrelation with pre-operative or post-operative pain in patients undergoing arthroscopic rotator cuff repair; althoughhigher pre-operative pain levels, worse pre-operative ases scores, and workers compensation status do influencepost-operative pain levels in arthroscopic rotator cuff repair.level of evidence: iii