Descriptive Epidemiology Studies

EPIDEMIOLOGY

Superior labral anterior to posterior (SLAP) lesions are a type of biceps related pathology found in a wide range of populations. In a retrospective review of 2375 shoulder arthroscopies, Snyder, Banas, & Karzel (1995) found the incidence rate was only 6%. Recently, Level III evidence found 9.4% of people had a SLAP lesion out of 4,975 cases (Weber, Martin, Seiler, & Harrast, 2012). A descriptive epidemiology review of 25,574 SLAP lesions found the incidence rate went from 17.0 SLAP lesions for every 10,000 patients to 28.1 lesions per 10,000 people (Zhang et al, 2012).

A higher incidence rate was found in people who are 20 to 29 years of age, and those who are 40 to 49 years of age (Zhang et al., 2012). In a blind assessment

A descriptive epidemiology study conducted by Chambers et al. (2016) in the National Football League showed 65 SLAP tears and a retrospective study conducted by Funk and Snow (2007) examined 51 professional rugby players who underwent shoulder arthroscopies and found lesions. A case series with level IV evidence identified 68 out of 119 throwers who came in with should pain had a SLAP lesion (Fedoriw, Ramkumar, McCulloch, Lintner, 2014). The repetitive nature and extremes of shoulder positions places added stress on the labrum (Wilk, Macrina, Cain, Dugas & Andrews,

MR arthrography, a further refinement of MRI by injection of contrast agent into the shoulder yields greater detail of intra-articular shoulder structures than does conventional MRI (Cools, 2017). A retrospective analysis done by Iqbal et al. (2010) reported that out of 124 patients referred for MR arthrogram with clinical suspicion of SLAP lesions, 36 of them were diagnosed with SLAP lesion in MR arthrogram and 22 only proved as SLAP by arthroscopy, with sensitivity (95.5%) but slightly lower specificity (85.7%). Similar findings in a comparison of 104 MRI and MRA findings revealed MRA’s to be more sensitive in the diagnosis of SLAP lesions (Dinauer, Flemming, Murphy & Doukas,