A Treatment based Classification Approach to Mechanical Lesion of Shoulder for Conservative Management and Improvement in Clinical Outcomes

A treatment based classification approach is where subjects are sub grouped to receive lesion specific interventions and this study presents similar approach for mechanical lesions of shoulder. Research has shown that Treatment Based Classification (TBC) system can enable and aid clinical research by identifying evidence based practice and this classification strategy had proven to be effective in neck and low back regions.

To formulate and establish the clinical utility of a treatment based classification for mechanical lesions of shoulder and to aid clinicians by providing a user friendly reasoning algorithm for effective patient management.

The construction of TBC comprises of 3 steps (i) formulating Treatment Based Classification algorithm (ii) content validation by expert opinion and (iii) application on patient population. The algorithm enables categorizing the subjects into 7 possible sub groups based on unique markers. This case study included 6 subjects for analysis.

By using the proposed Treatment Based Classification system, it was evident that the process of examination became easy and enables lesion specific interventions to the subjects as directed by the significant markers contained in the categorization. All the 6 subjects included in the study were benefited by using TBC approach by receiving matched interventions, had significant improvement in pain, ROM and shoulder function.

The proposed treatment based classification eases the clinical decision making process and effectively categorizes the subjects with mechanical shoulder dysfunction to be able to receive matched interventions resulting in better outcome.