Complications Associated with Subpectoral Biceps Tenodesis: Low Rates of Incidence Following Surgery

Tenodesis of the long head of the biceps tendon is a common procedure used to alleviate pain caused by instability or inflammation of the tendon. While there are multiple fixation techniques for performing a biceps tenodesis, the complications for each procedure are similar. These include failure or rerupture of the tendon, hematoma, infection, persistent pain, reaction to a fixation device, nerve injury, cosmetic deformity, and fracture.

An open subpectoral biceps tenodesis (OBT) using an interference screw technique has been reported advantageous due to its simplicity, the maintenance of muscle tendon and soft tissue units, the preservation of the length-tension relationship, the distal removal of the tendon from the bicipital groove and from the shoulder, and the biomechnical strength advantages of having an interference screw. Numerous studies have reported improvement and excellent clinical outcome and pain relief after OBT. Complications reported after OBT with interference screw fixation include failure of tenodesis, hematoma, seroma, infection, bioabsorbable screw reaction, persistent bicipital pain, neurovascular injury, or fracture. These studies report on case series of less than 50 patients, and the rate of complications after OBT may be difficult to accurately determine.

The purpose of the present study was to report on the incidence of complications after OBT and to describe the type of complications in a single institution with 2 orthopedic surgeons. Our hypothesis was that the rate of adverse events after OBT was low.