These 61 patients were treated for 74 metastatic locations: 31 were spinal (42%), 21 were pelvic (28%), 10 were long bones (13%) 8 were scapula (11%), 3 were rib, and 1 was mandibular.
A review of the literature (available through PubMed) revealed several studies on avulsions of the scapula [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12].
Wilber et al. [6] presented 40 scapula fracture cases and a literature review.
Studies involving the femur were most prevalent (37), followed by the spine (14), scapula (3), tibia (3), radius (1), knee (1), and humerus (1).
The glenoids of 412 scapula specimens were templated with the use of 6 currently available glenoid systems to determine the goodness of fit for the various designs.
These research outcomes emphasize the role of the scapula in normal shoulder function that can be summarized in three points [19, 20]: (1) maintenance of dynamic stability and control glenohumeral joint mobility, (2) scapula as basis for muscle attachment, (3) scapula as the link in the proximal-to-distal transfer of energy for the appropriate shoulder positioning.
Scapula distance right/left the maximum distance of the left (1) and right (2) scapula plane (a).
This study used 72 scapulae.
In the 61 scapulae, 85% of the points defining the endosteal surfaces vary among scapulae by less than 2 mm.
From these data, we defined a unique glenoid vault shape and empirically developed 5 sizes to represent the study population of the 61 scapulae.
