Cutaneous nerve lesions of the shoulder and arm after arthroscopic shoulder surgery.

Increasing use of shoulder arthroscopy has caused developing awareness of the associated complications. A consecutive series of patients who had undergone arthroscopic surgery of the shoulder was reviewed. The overall incidence of a sensory deficit was 21 (7%) in 304 patients at 2 weeks after operation, and in approximately half (3.3%) of these patients this condition was still present at 8 months' average follow-up. These deficits fell into three distinct patterns, suggesting that damage was occurring to three different nerve branches. Most of these areas of hypesthesia corresponded to lesions of cutaneous branches of the axillary nerve; the most likely cause was direct injury at the portal sites, particularly the lateral portal.