Rehabilitation Following Shoulder Arthroplasty: Experience at a Rehabilitation Centre

Summary

We report our experience of rehabilitation in shoulder arthroplasty through a series of 130 patients operated on with an Aequalis prosthesis from 1991 to 1994. Because our Health Care System has provision for impatient rehabilitation, patients were rehabilitated in a specialised rehabilitation center with a swimming pool. The aetiologies were osteoarthritis in 58 cases, rheumatoid arthritis in 21, old fractures in 16 and 34 other causes: osteonecrosis (5 cases), revision surgery (12 cases), locked posterior dislocations (4 cases), cuff tear arthropathies (5 cases), complexes fractures (8 cases), arthritis after radiotherapy (1 case), necrosis after large cuff tear (1 case). Our rehabilitation was directly inspired by Neer’s protocol. However, we added rehabilitation in a warm swimming pool which has simplified the programme. The immediate use of a pool heated to 35 °C and a suspensory system have allowed the patients to make breast-stroke movements without gravity, whether or not they know how to swim, and has quickly removed the early muscular shakes and postoperative inhibition with recovery of passive movement.