Arthroscopic chronic tennis elbow surgery preserves elbow proprioception

摘要

Study design. - Retrospective cohort study. Introduction. - A new method of accurately assessing the compromised elbow's proprioception was developed for this post-surgical population using information from previous neurophysiologic proprioception studies of healthy elbows. Hypothesis. - This retrospective cohort study investigated the patterns and the degree of proprioceptive impairment and recovery following arthroscopic surgery for chronic lateral epicondylitis. Material and methods. - Participants had undergone arthroscopic elbow surgery two years prior to this study (n = 15). Healthy, non-injured volunteers with similar demographics (n = 15) served as controls. Both groups were evaluated using quantitative measures of joint position sense for proprioceptive functioning. In order to obtain the most accurate proprioceptive measurements, inter-individual interaction and visual input biases were eliminated. Retrospective chart reviews were performed to compare qualitative self-reported measures of proprioceptive function in arthroscopic surgery patients before surgery and two years post-surgery.