Conservative Versus Operative - First Time Shoulder Dislocations

While primary anterior shoulder dislocations had been previously treated conservatively, growing concerns amidst recurrent shoulder instability have fueled interest in managing these injuries with surgery to mitigate the risk of future instability events. While the significant literature investigating the rates of shoulder instability with initial operative management suggests improvement outcomes, there is limited level 1 evidence to support these implications. A randomized-controlled trial (RCT) of 21 primary anterior shoulder dislocations undergoing arthroscopic Bankart repair or rehabilitation ( 9 operative vs 12 nonoperative; mean age: 22), found lower rates of recurrent shoulder instability (11% in operative vs 72% in non-operative; p=0.004) and higher Single Assessment Numeric Evaluation (SANE) scores (88 in operative vs 57 in non-operative; p<0.002) after 36 months of follow-up. Similarly, another RCT of 76 patients (37 operative vs 39 non-operative; mean age: 22), found lower rates of recurrent shoulder instability (2.7% in operative vs 53.8% in non-operative; p<0.01) and higher Oxford assessment scores (70% with either 'excellent' or 'good' scores in operative group vs 26% with either 'excellent' or 'good' scores in non-operative group) after 10 years of follow-up. A RCT of 31 patients (16 operative vs 15 non-operative; mean age: 22), found lower rates of recurrent instability ( 19% in operative vs 60% in non-operative; p=0.02) but no significantly different Western Ontario Score Indices (WOSI) (86% in operative vs 75% in non-operative; p=0.17) at a follow up of 79 months. A RCT of 91 patients (44 operative vs 47 non-operative; mean age: 22), found lower rates of recurrent instability (2.3% in operative vs 19.1% in non-operative; p=0.01) and no significantly difference in WOSI (92.7% in operative vs 91.5% in non-operative; p>0.05) at 2 years follow-up. A RCT of 40 patients (20 operative vs 20 non-operative; mean age: 21), found lower rates of recurrent shoulder instability (10% in operative vs 70% in non-operative; p=0.0001) and a higher WOSI (17.1 in operative vs 11.5 in non-operative; p=0.035) at 2 years follow-up. The previous 5 RCT's represent the only level 1 evidence amidst a much larger proportion of lower-level evidence upon which much of the discussion of surgical vs non-operative management has been formulated. Additionally, only 2 RCT's conducted power analyses to determine if their sample size was adequate, and they did not demonstrate unanimous results with patient reported outcomes as described above. It is therefore critical to increase the amount of level 1 evidence on the topic of operative vs non-operative management of primary shoulder dislocations to better inform this debate. This study aims to compare the incidence of recurrent shoulder instability and patient reported outcomes of patients with primary anterior shoulder dislocations managed with surgery (arthroscopic Bankart repair) compared to non-operative management (standardized rehabilitation protocol, control group).