Editorial Commentary: One- to 2-Year Follow-Up After Instability Surgery May Be Similar, but Longer Follow-Up Will Almost Certainly Show Diminished Patient-Reported Outcomes as Recurrence Rates Increase

Multiple studies have looked at changes in patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) with time after a given intervention. For some interventions, such as total joint replacement, incremental changes in PROMs are modest after the first year. Instability surgery, in contrast, poses a risk of recurrence that increases each year, well after a 2-year follow-up. For arthroscopic Bankart repair, with a minimum 10-year follow-up, recurrent instability occurred in 28% of patients, whereas only one-third of the recurrent instability events occurred in the first 2 years, and a 5-year follow-up showed only 76% survivorship. Activity modification was the major predictor of success. Reasonably responsive PROMs disease specific to shoulder instability would be expected to reflect this risk and not remain stable after 1 year postoperatively.