Effects of surgical repair on active shoulder position sense and 3-dimensional reaching accuracy in a patient with anterior shoulder instability.

The purpose of this report was to investigate whether a subject with anterior shoulder instability exhibited better active shoulder position sense and 3-dimensional (3-D) reaching accuracy after a surgical repair. The 19-year-old male subject underwent an open Bankart repair procedure for his left shoulder followed by a standardized post-operative rehabilitation program. Shoulder position sense was examined with traditional passive matching and active positioning protocols. Reaching accuracy in space with the unrestricted arm motion was also examined. The subject was tested 5 months prior to the surgery and re-tested 6 months after the surgery. With the traditional passive matching protocol, shoulder position sense improved <2° after surgery. However, shoulder position sense improved greatly after surgery with active shoulder abduction (up to 4.25°) and active shoulder rotation (up to 5.87°) testing protocols. In addition, reaching accuracy also greatly improved after surgery (up to 10.97 cm) with the most significant improvement when reaching to targets located in the frontal plane. Data suggest that anterior shoulder repair with rehabilitation can improve both active shoulder position sense and reaching accuracy, especially in shoulder positions involving abduction with external rotation.