RESEARCH ARTICLE


Treatment of SLAP Lesions



Apostolos Stathellis1, *, Emmanouil Brilakis1, Jim-Dimitris Georgoulis3, Emmanouil Antonogiannakis1, Anastasios Georgoulis2
1 3rd Orthopaedic Department, Hygeia Hospital, Athens, Greece
2 University of Ioannina, Orthopaedic Department, Ioannina, Greece
3 Department of General Surgery, General Hospital of Corfu, Greece


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Creative Commons License
© 2018 Stathellis et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the 3rd Orthopaedic Department, University of Ioannina, Hygeia Hospital, Athens, Greece; Tel: +302054074612; E-mail: georgoulis.anastasios@gmail.com


Abstract

Background:

The surgical treatment of a Superior Labrum Anterior and Posterior (SLAP) lesion becomes more and more frequent as the surgical techniques, the implants and the postoperative rehabilitation of the patient are improved and provide in most cases an excellent outcome.

Objective:

However, a standard therapy of SLAP lesions in the shoulder surgery has not been established yet. An algorithm on how to treat SLAP lesions according to their type and data on the factors that influence the surgical outcome is essential for the everyday clinical practice.

Method:

In this article, a retrospective evaluation of patients with SLAP lesion, treated surgically in our orthopaedic clinic was conducted.

Results:

According to the clinical outcome and our experience with the surgical therapy of SLAP lesions we demonstrate an algorithm on the proper therapeutic approach.

Conclusion:

SLAP I lesions are treated with debridement. Most controversies concern patients with SLAP II lesions, whose therapy is either fixation of the superior labrum or tenotomy/tenodesis of the long head of the biceps tendon. For patients with SLAP III or IV lesions the most commonly accepted approach is tenotomy or tenodesis of the long head of biceps tendon.

Keywords: SLAP lesion, Shoulder, Biceps tendon, Tenotomy, Tenodesis, Treatment algorithm.