Digital and virtual reality–based rehabilitation versus conventional therapy for rotator cuff tears and post-repair recovery: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: To evaluate the effectiveness of virtual reality-based rehabilitation compared to conventional rehabilitation methods in improving shoulder functions, range of motion (ROM), strength, and pain relief in patients recovering from rotator cuff repair. To assess the impact of virtual reality-based rehabilitation on rehabilitation adherence and patient satisfaction in postoperative rotator cuff repair recovery. Methods: A systematic literature search of PubMed, Cochrane Library, Dimensions AI, and Google Scholar was performed from inception to February 14, 2025. Studies involving patients who underwent rotator cuff repair and comparing virtual reality (VR)-based rehabilitation with standard physical therapy were included. Data were extracted and synthesized. Meta-analysis was conducted for outcomes reported by multiple studies, and risk of bias was assessed with the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2.0 tool. Results: Of 599 screened records, 6 studies (n ≈ 332 patients) met the inclusion criteria. There was no statistically significant difference between VR-based and conventional rehabilitation in reducing perceived pain and improving patient-reported functional outcomes. Importantly, VR-based therapy led to significantly greater improvement in shoulder abduction ROM than conventional rehabilitation. However, gains in shoulder flexion and external rotation were not significantly different between groups. Patient adherence and satisfaction varied with rehabilitation modality: home-based digital programs tended to improve adherence, while satisfaction depended on individual preferences for supervision. Conclusion: VR-based rehabilitation is a feasible alternative or adjunct to traditional physiotherapy after rotator cuff repair. It yields postoperative outcomes (pain relief, functional improvement, and strength recovery) comparable to standard rehabilitation, with a clear advantage in enhancing shoulder abduction ROM. Digital rehabilitation may improve patient compliance through greater engagement and accessibility, although integration of periodic clinician interaction may be necessary to maximize patient satisfaction. These findings support incorporating digital health technology into postoperative shoulder rehab protocols, tailored to individual patient needs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
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 teacher head, 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".