Houston doctor invents new technique for repairing injured rotator cuffs

You don’t have to be an athlete to injure your rotator cuff.  In fact, every year about 2 million people tear one of the four muscles located in the shoulder.

With conventional techniques of repairing rotary cuff tears, patients have about a 45% healing rate, but Dr. Marc Labbe, an orthopedic surgeon in Houston, has come up with a better technique for repairing rotary cuff tears that increases healing rates to about 85%. With his improved technique, Dr. Labbe uses a graft during surgery to add strength to the repaired muscle. 

"It's kind of like patching the elbow on your coat or the knee on your jeans. We've got the normal repair, so you've got the tendon attaching to the bone, and then on top of that, we've got this extra patch of material," explains Dr. Labbe.

Dr. Labbe says that the grafting technique is ......read more