Parkinson's disease and shoulder arthroplasty: a systematic review

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder associated with inferior clinical outcomes after surgical management of many orthopedic conditions. The purpose of this systematic review was to define the clinical, functional, and patient-reported outcomes of shoulder arthroplasty (SA) in patients with PD.

Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, a systematic search was completed using the Ovid platform for searches in MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Central, and Cochrane Systematic Reviews, with additional searches in Web of Science and Scopus. Included studies were full-length, English-language, clinical investigations reporting on SA in patients with PD with at least one clinical outcome.

Seven studies including 7126 patients (7134 SA) met inclusion criteria with a mean age of 72.6 (range, 69.5-75.8 years), 58.9% female, and the average follow-up duration was 65 months (range, 17-119 months). Anatomic total shoulder arthroplasty (aTSA) was the most reported implant surgery (n = 3455, 48.4%) followed by hemiarthroplasty (HA) (n = 2840, 39.8%), and reverse shoulder arthroplasty (RSA) (n = 839,1.8%). SA consistently improved pain. Forward elevation, abduction, and external rotation had a pooled mean increase of 36°, 20°, and 6°, respectively. Complications occurred at a pooled rate of 22.5%, with stiffness (7.1%), need for revision (5.3%), and instability (4.7%) as the most common complications reported. Reoperations inclusive of revisions occurred at a lower pooled rate of 5.6%, with aTSA (n = 201; 9.0%) having the highest rate, followed by HA (n = 158; 7.1%), and then RSA (n = 42; 1.9%).

The results of the present systematic review demonstrate that SA in patients with PD results in consistent pain relief. However, inferior improvements in clinical outcomes may be expected when compared with patients without PD, likely due to the neurodegenerative manifestations of this disorder. In addition, RSA had a lower reoperation rate than HA and aTSA in patients with PD.