HOW SENSITIVE IS THE DELTOID MOMENT ARM TO HUMERAL OFFSET CHANGES WITH RTSA

Reverse total shoulder arthroplasty (RTSA) is an increasingly common treatment for osteoarthritic shoulders with irreparable rotator cuff tears. Although very successful in alleviating pain and restoring some function, there is little objective information relating geometric changes imposed by the reverse shoulder and arm function, particularly the moment generating capacity of the shoulder muscles. Recent modeling studies of reverse shoulders have shown significant variation in deltoid muscle moment arms over a typical range of humeral offset locations in shoulders with RTSA. The goal of this study was to investigate the sensitivity of muscle moment arms as a function of varying the joint center and humeral offset in three representative RTSA subjects that spanned the anatomical range from our previous study cohort. We hypothesized there may exist a more beneficial joint implant placement, measured by muscle moment arms, compared to the actual surgical implant configuration. A 12 degree of freedom, subject-specific model was used to represent the shoulders of three patients with RTSA for whom fluoroscopic measurements of scapular and humeral kinematics during abduction had been obtained. The computer model used subject-specific in vivo abduction kinematics and systematically varied humeral offset locations over 1521 different perturbations from the surgical placement to determine moment arms for the anterior, lateral and posterior aspects of the deltoid muscle. The humeral offset was varied from its surgical position ±4 mm in the anterior/posterior direction, ±12mm in the medial/lateral direction, and −10 mm to 14 mm in the superior/inferior direction. The anterior deltoid moment arm varied up to 20 mm with humeral offset and center of rotation variations, primarily in the medial/lateral and superior/inferior directions. Similarly, the lateral deltoid moment arm demonstrated variations up to 20 mm, primarily with humeral offset changes in the medial/lateral and anterior/posterior directions. The posterior deltoid moment arm varied up to 15mm, primarily in early abduction, and was most sensitive to changes of the humeral offset in the superior/inferior direction. The goal of this study was to assess the sensitivity of the deltoid muscle moment arms as a function of joint configuration for existing RTSA subjects. High variations were found for all three deltoid components. Variation over the entire abduction arc was greatest in the anterior and lateral deltoid, while the posterior deltoid moment arm was mostly sensitive to humeral offset changes early in the abduction arc. Moment arm changes of 15–20 mm represent a significant amount of the total deltoid moment arm. This means there is an opportunity to dramatically change the deltoid moment arms through surgical placement of the joint center of rotation and humeral stem. Computational models of the shoulder may help surgeons optimize subject-specific placement of RTSA implants to provide the best possible muscle function, and assist implant designers to configure devices for the best overall performance.