A Prospective, Double-Blind, Randomized Clinical Trial Comparing Subacromial Injection of Betamethasone and Xylocaine to Xylocaine alone in Chronic Rotator Cuff Tendinosis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Rotator cuff tendinosis is a common problem with significant health and economic effects. Nonoperative management includes the widespread use of subacromial steroid injections despite the lack of evidence of its efficacy. HYPOTHESIS: A subacromial injection of betamethasone will be more effective than xylocaine alone in improving the quality of life, impingement sign, and range of motion in patients who have chronic rotator cuff tendinosis or partial rotator cuff tears. STUDY DESIGN: Randomized controlled clinical trial; Level of evidence, 1. METHODS: Patients with rotator cuff tendinosis or partial cuff tear with symptoms longer than 6 months, with failure of 6 weeks of physical therapy and 2 weeks of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, who were older than 30 years of age, and who showed >50% improvement with the Neer impingement test were stratified for Workplace Safety and Insurance Board status and previous injection. Outcome measures--the Western Ontario Rotator Cuff Index; American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons standardized form; Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand; active forward elevation; active internal rotation; active external rotation; and the Neer impingement sign--were assessed at 2, 6, 12, and 24 weeks after injection. The injection into the subacromial space contained either 5 mL of 2% xylocaine alone or 4 mL of 2% xylocaine and 1 mL (6 mg) of betamethasone in an opaque syringe. RESULTS: In 58 patients (betamethasone group, n = 30; xylocaine group, n = 28), the authors found no statistically significant difference between the 2 treatment groups for all outcomes and time intervals. The scores for the Western Ontario Rotator Cuff Index at 3 months were xylocaine = 45.4% +/- 13% and betamethasone = 56.3% +/- 17% (P = .13). At 6 months, the scores were xylocaine = 51% +/- 32% and betamethasone = 59% +/- 26% (P = .38). All other outcomes showed similar values. As well, similar results were found for 2 and 6 weeks after injection. Both groups showed improvement from baseline in all outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: With the numbers available for this study, the authors found betamethasone to be no more effective in improving the quality of life, range of motion, or impingement sign than xylocaine alone in patients with chronic rotator cuff tendinosis for all follow-up time intervals evaluated.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".