Recent Study on the Effectiveness of Shoulder Surgeries
Are you or a client of yours thinking about shoulder surgery?
Over the years, I’ve seen several studies that identified placebo procedures having as good or better success than actual surgery procedures for knees, back, and other areas. Surely, surgery can be miraculous for many conditions and the doctors doing the surgery are often doing amazing work. On the other hand, there is an enormous amount of money spent and very little accountability in the many cases where the surgery is probably a massive waste of money and time.
This well-designed study from Oxford published in the medical journal Lancet looked at people with shoulder pain where the distal supraspinatus tendon was impinged between the acromion process of the scapula and the head of the humerus. The study participants were in one of three groups: traditional surgery, sham surgery (cut but no procedure done), and no treatment. The two surgery groups received some physical therapy. Here are the results:
“Surgical groups had better outcomes for shoulder pain and function compared with no treatment but this difference was not clinically important. Additionally, surgical decompression appeared to offer no extra benefit over arthroscopy only. The difference between the surgical groups and no treatment might be the result of, for instance, a placebo effect or postoperative physiotherapy. The findings question the value of this operation for these indications, and this should be communicated to patients during the shared treatment decision-making process.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article