Level II; systematic review of levels I and II studies.

Level I, systematic review of level I studies.

Background To evaluate the safety and effectiveness of intra-articular corticosteroid injection following arthroscopic shoulder surgery. Method PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Web of Science and CNKI were retrieved from the inception of electronic databases to June 2020. All analyses were performed using Stata/SE 15.1 version (StataCorp). Result 6 papers were included in this meta-analysis. There was no significant difference in tear rate (OR = 0.713, 95% CI: 0.450 to 1.129, P = 0.149), constant score (MD = 6.212, 95% CI: 2.552 to 9.971, P = 0.001), rating scale of the American shoulder and elbow surgeons (ASES) score (MD=-0.116, 95% CI: -1.769 to 1.546) and the university of California at Los Angeles shoulder rating (UCLA) score (MD = -1.461, 95% CI: -3.221 to 0.299). The infection rate of patients who received corticosteroid injection within 1 month after operation was significantly higher (P < 0.05), but there was no significant change in the infection rate of patients who received corticosteroid injection within 2–4 months after operation. Conclusion The use of corticosteroids after shoulder arthroscopy will not increase the rate of postoperative tears, but the injection of corticosteroid within 1 month will increase the postoperative infection rate.