(Johanna Menze, PhD Candidate, University of Bern, 29. November, 2022 )
Biomechanical Evaluation of Diagnostic Tests for Rotator Cuff Lesions
Diagnostic tests are routinely applied by clinicians as a first assessment of patients who seek medical care in case of shoulder pain, weakness or limited range of motion. Numerous different tests exists to attempt differentiation between rotator cuff tears or other shoulder lesions and to localize the injury location. However, sensitivity and specificity of those tests have been studied clinically in the past and strong variabilities in results have been published. Next to differences in study designs, the variability also results from the strong heterogeneity of the patient population with shoulder symptoms.
Thus, there is a need to biomechanically evaluate the established diagnostic tests to gain clarity about their effectiveness and help explain discrepancies between tests for different patient populations. Musculoskeletal modeling of the shoulder is an important means to perform this analysis. It provides the possibility to study and compare muscles moment arms and resulting muscle load distribution in diagnostic postures given different shoulder lesions.
In this webcast, PhD Candidate Johanna Menze, will present how biomechanical understandings about clinical challenges can by gained using musculoskeletal modeling. She will give an insight into muscle load distribution for shoulder models with different rotator cuff tear patterns and compare those to the behavior of a healthy shoulder model. Finally, a perspective will be given on the application of shoulder modeling for surgical interventions and potential advancements in shoulder modeling.
Playback (91 MB)YouTube