Smoking Status and a Pulmonary Function Test in Patients with Rotator Cuff Tears

Although chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affects one in several smokers, only a few patients are correctly diagnosed compared to the estimated number of patients. Several recent reports indicate that the development of rotator cuff tears is related to smoking. In this study, we investigated smoking status in patients with rotator cuff tears and evaluated the possibility of undiagnosed COPD by a pulmonary function test. The subjects were 150 consecutive patients over 40 years old, who had been diagnosed with rotator cuff tears and had been examined by a pulmonary function test before surgery in our orthopedic department between April 2011 and June 2015. They consisted of 96 men and 54 women, which included 59 non-smokers (39.3%), 62 ex-smokers (41.3%), and 29 smokers (19.3%). The smoking rate of the subjects was the same as that of the general Japanese population. However, the ever-smokers who smoked more than 21 cigarettes per day were 31.9%, which was high compared to the Japanese ever-smokers population, i.e. 15.2% of men and 5.5% of women. Twenty-five subjects (16.7%) showed airflow limitation, and they consisted of 7 cases of COPD, 3 cases of bronchial asthma, one case of bronchiectasis, and 14 undiagnosed cases. The undiagnosed cases consisted of 7 non-smokers, 5 ex-smokers, and 2 smokers. Their stages of COPD were stage 1 in 11 cases and stage 2 in 3 cases. The prevalence of airflow limitation increased with increasing age: 0% for 40's, 8.3% for 50's, 20.7% for 60's, and 25.6% for over 70's. From these results, we recognized that paying attention to the numbers of cigarettes smoked per day are important in addition to the smoking history, for the patients with rotator cuff tears. Also, sharing the data of a pulmonary function test before surgery can contribute to the early diagnosis of COPD.