Arthroscopic Rotator Cuff Repair Using Modified Mason Allen Technique

Background: The most frequent cause of early failure, both in open and arthroscopic cuff repairs, is the pull out of the suture through the tendon. Reinforced stitches have been introduced trying to address this problem. Whereas reinforced stitches, such as the modified Mason-Allen, can be used in open and arthroscopic rotator cuff repairs.Aim of the Work: Was to investigate the short term functional outcome of a series of patients who underwent arthro-Patients and Methods: From October 2013 to August 2015, a prospective case series was done to investigate the functional outcome of arthroscopic modified Mason Allen stitch using single row technique, done for 22 patients (22 shoulders) with symptomatic rotator cuff tears. The mean duration of follow-up in our series was 10.82±4.15 (range, 2-20 months). There were 17 females (77.3%) and 5 males (22.7%) with a mean age of 47.45 years ±8.58 (range, 33-62 years). There were 17 dominants (77.3%) and 5 non-dominants (22.7%) shoulders. The mean duration of pre-operative symptoms were 9.6 months ±8.4 months (range, 3-36 months).Seventeen patients were housewives (77.3%), three patients were heavy manual workers (13.5%), and two patients were drivers (9.1%).Twelve patients had degenerative tears with no history of trauma (54.5%) and ten patients (45.5%) gave history of traumatic event (fall to the ground).Seventeen patients (77.27%) had no chronic medical conditions, four patients were diabetic (type II diabetes) (18.18%) and one patient had rheumatoid arthritis (4.5%). The Constant-Murley score was used for pre-operative assessment and compared with that at final follow-up.Results: A statistically significant difference was found in the mean increase of the ROM) at final follow-up compared to per-operative ROM (p-value 0.001).Statistically significant difference was found in mean increase of the total.Constant score (p-value 0.001) comparing the preoperative and post-operative.Conclusion: Single row modified Mason-Allen technique is an arthroscopic technique that is easily performed to establish Mason-Allen stitch that was described by Gerber for the open repair, with good functional outcome.