Srgical release of the suprascapular nerve en-trapment

Background: Entrapment of the suprascapular nerve may causes pain in the shoulder which may be attributing wrongly to the other shoulder disorders and the treatment often delayed. Many authors believed that the treatment of this disease is conservative. This study was conducted to assess the effect of surgical release of the suprascapular nerve on the improvement of the patients' functional score. Methods: Operative release for the entrapment of the suprascapular nerve was carried out in 5 patients. All patients were followed for 16 months (between 12-20 months). They finally were assessed by the functional shoulder score devised by constant and murley. The average score before the operative release was 40 ± 17. The diagnosis was confirmed with electrophysiologic studies and MRI. The average time from the onset of symptoms to operation was 7.8 ± 3.2 months.  Results: All patients were followed for an average of 16 months after operative release. Final constant score was 75.8 ± 26.2. There was an excellent result in all patients, except one who obliged to change his job (case 1). All patients were pain free after operation and had full recovery of muscle bulk except for case 1. Conclusion: The symptomatic and functional outcome in our study showed that operative decompression and entrapment of the suprascapular nerve improved the patients' functional score. It seems that, if conservative treatments such as physiotherapy failed, it is better to do operative release as soon as possible, because the delayed operation has negative effect on final outcome. Key words: Suprascapular nerve, entrapment, functional constant score, nerve release, ganglion.