Many rotator cuff shoulder surgeries fail. Understanding the tendon better could help.
Due to the high physical demands on rotator cuffs and the complex anatomy of tendon, post-surgery re-tears are common. Dianne Little, assistant professor of basic medical sciences, wants to engineer tendon that would match the patient’s own rotator cuff. But there’s one big hurdle in the way of tendon engineering: researchers don’t fully understand what tendon is.