A study in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery suggests that patients who receive shoulder arthroplasty procedures while receiving workers’ compensation may have more negative outcomes when compared with those receiving the same procedure without workers’ compensation benefits.

The procedures total shoulder arthroplasty (TSA) is typically used to help those with arthritis regain mobility or comfort in their shoulder joint. The researchers looked at 13 workers’ comp patients and 63 non-workers’ comp patients for two years after their surgeries. They controlled for demographics, health survey responses, return to work timing and time spent out of work. They also looked at the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons scores, which are based off a standardized assessment asking patients about difficulty doing normal activities like lifting things overhead, brushing hair, throwing a ball overhand, etc.

The American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons scores two years after surgeries for the workers’ comp group (73.6) were significantly lower than the control group (86.6) even though the other comparative factors were not all that different. The majority of the workers’ comp patients were laborers, all the workers’ comp patients were males. As a whole they were also younger than the control group, whose mean age was 63.2 years while the workers’ comp group was an average of 55.9 years old.

Authors noted that 9 of the 13 of workers’ comp patients did not return to work, or at least had not yet returned two years after their surgery. The minimum final follow-up was two years post-surgery but some patients were monitored long after their surgeries, with the average follow-up time for the workers’ comp group being 46.5 months and 57.1 months for the control group.

Similar studies have been done to look at results on workers’ comp and non-workers’ comp patients who have undergone reverse shoulder arthroplasty (RSA) and rotator cuff repair and those studies yielded similar results. Patients with a workers’ comp claim improved after their surgery, but compared to patients who were not receiving workers’ comp they had more a negative outcome.