SPRING v1.0

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Shoulder Replacement Prehabilitation and Rehabilitating Early (SPRING study)

• IRAS ID

  364990

• Contact name

  Kate Button

• Contact email

  ButtonK@cardiff.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Cardiff University

• ISRCTN Number

  ISRCTN55050281

• Duration of Study in the UK

  3 years, 11 months, 28 days

• Research summary

  More and more people in the UK are having surgery to replace their shoulder joints. It can take more than 6 months and sometimes over a year for people to recover from this surgery. In the early months after surgery, people need help with washing, dressing and self-care and may need to wear a sling.

  Supportive treatments either before (prehabilitation) or after surgery (rehabilitation) are critical.

  However, these are not always routinely offered and we do not know what type of prehabilitation or rehabilitation works best for people who have shoulder replacement surgery.

  We want to test new prehabilitation and rehabilitation treatments in people who will have and have had shoulder replacement surgery.
  We will hold interviews with people who have undergone or who are preparing to have a shoulder replacement to help us develop prehabilitation and early rehabilitation treatments. We will ask professionals e.g. orthopaedic surgeons for suggestions on treatments. We will trial the treatments with a small group of participants and practitioners across the UK. All of this development work will be done before we start our trial. In our trial, we will test if they work with about 392 adults who have been referred for shoulder replacement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We will use a randomised design, and participants will either receive the care they would normally get in the NHS or one of the two new treatments. We will measure pain and ability to carry out daily activities before and after receiving their different treatments and will continue to do these measurements for twelve months after shoulder replacement. We will check that our new treatments are safe, that people can follow the treatments and that they are delivered by the health professionals in the way intended.

• REC name

  Wales REC 6

• REC reference

  26/WA/0071

• Date of REC Opinion

  5 Jun 2026

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion