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Background: Following repairs of large-to-massive tears of the rotator cuff, the rates of tendon retears are high and often involve tissue deficiency. Animal studies of the Restore Orthobiologic Implant, a collagen-based material derived from the small intestine mucosa of pigs, have indicated that it might be used to help overcome such problems. We carried out a study to determine whether patients who received this xenograft to augment a rotator cuff repair exhibited greater shoulder strength, shoulder function, and/or resistance to retearing.

Methods: We compared data from a group of patients who had undergone conventional rotator cuff repair with xenograft augmentation (the xenograft group) with data from a group in whom a repair had been done by the same surgeon without augmentation (the controls). The groups were matched for gender, mean age, and mean size of the rotator cuff tear. All subjects completed …