The drop arm test for rotator cuff tears is a pretty common test that we use every day to try to detect if somebody has a pretty significant or full thickness rotator cuff tear. What you do for the drop arm test is you essentially passively bring them up to about 90 degrees of abduction. And in this position I tell the patient, I'm going to let go of your arm, try to keep it up right there for me.
I'm going to let go. And then a negative sign was he has no problems keeping that arm in that position. If we had a positive drop arm sign, what we would see is the rotator cuff would have an inability of holding that, and he'd have a bit of a lag, sometimes even a shoulder shrug. So the drop arm sign is a great one for a pretty significant, large-sized rotator cuff tear, not just impingement.