About this episode
The episode discusses the implications of rotator cuff surgery in light of recent media coverage and the skepticism surrounding its efficacy compared to physical therapy.
Earlier this week media reported that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, had surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff. That’s interesting. Not just because I wrote about rotator cuff surgery last week . Kennedy has spent years arguing that medical treatments should be recommended only after they’re proven to work in rigorous trials. Which raises the inevitable question: What do rigorous trials show about rotator cuff surgery? RT is 100% reader-supported. To help it continue, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. At half a million performed each year in the U.S., rotator cuff surgery is among the most common orthopedic procedures. Which is curious, because the handful of randomized trials testing it have repeatedly found little or no difference between surgery and physical therapy. Even within orthopedics there is deep skepticism, and sham-controlled trials of the procedure are currently underway . Meanwhile, as I discussed last week, in a recent MRI study of healthy Finnish people age 40 and over, fixable ‘injuries’ were seen in perfectly functional shoulders. And not just some of them: 96% of people with no shoulder complaints had potentially…
People in this episode
Host: David Newman
Topics covered
- rotator cuff surgery
- medical trials
- orthopedic procedures
- skepticism in medicine
- aging and health
Keywords
- rotator cuff
- surgery
- trials
- physical therapy
- orthopedics
- skepticism
- aging
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Health and Human Services, RT
Books & works: MRI study
Places: U.S., Finland
More episodes of Research Translation Podcast
- Alzheimer's and Amyloid 3: The Mistake of the Invisible Friend · June 10, 2026 · 29 min
- Alzheimer’s and Amyloid 2: Mistakes Of Mice and Men · June 3, 2026 · 23 min
- Alzheimer's and Amyloid Part 1: The First Mistake · May 28, 2026 · 21 min
- The Ghost On the Balance Sheet of Cancer Screening · May 20, 2026 · 34 min
- Surgery To Treat Knee Degeneration Increased Knee Degeneration · May 12, 2026 · 24 min
- Paxlovid: A Requiem · May 7, 2026 · 30 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Research Translation Podcast podcast page.