A systematic review: Of acromion types and its effect on degenerative rotator cuff tear

Background: Shoulder joint pain is commonly seen in primary care. Were many of them diagnosed with rotator cuff disease especially involvement of supraspinatus tendon of rotator cuff. The progression of disease leads to tear of rotator cuff and the etiology is multifactorial. However, characteristic changes of acromion morphology appear as major risk factor for rotator cuff tear. According to an ancient classification of acromion type I (flat), type II (curved), or type III (hooked) introduced by Bigliani et al. also documented that incident of rotator cuff tear highly increased with type III (hooked) acromion. Continue study over acromion shape a rare new type IV (convex) acromion also discovered. Many studies have attempted to correlate acromion characteristic with rotator cuff tears. But result still we attempted to determine the rotator cuff tear in association with different shape of acromion through a systemic review of appropriate studies. Methods: Pubmed, Scopus and Baidu scholar database engine searched, limiting results to those published in the English language without limiting year. The key search terms utilized were “acromion morphology”/”rotator cuff tear” and “shoulder joint” / “impingement syndrome”. Over 150 abstract reviewed and 20 literatures were analyzed for quality and relevance study. Conclusions: On the base of previous published article, the different types of acromion shape distribution is not equally seen in population. The most common type II acromion appears large in number with or without rotator cuff disease. Those with type III acromion more than 70% found with degenerative changes or tear of rotator cuff. Current evidence suggests that pathological changes or tear of rotator cuff arise from a multivariare etiology. It increasingly evident that type III acromion plays greater role to rotator cuff tear than other type I and type II of Bilgiani acromion classification.