Shoulder pain explained

This is my first blog post or post. whatever you want to call it.  The project that I’m starting is called the rotator cuff expert. The reason why I’m doing this project is because it’s difficult for patients to understand all the details that go along with shoulder problems whether it’s rotator cuff or other things.  I say rotator cuff because most people, in most circumstances in my office, have problems with the rotator cuff. Now it could be other things.  We can talk about that as we go along but this is my first post and we will talk about the reasons why our shoulders may hurt.    I’m an orthopedic surgeon I have been  an orthopedic surgeon for about 14 years .  I see a lot of people for shoulder pain.

 I’ve noticed over time more and more questions come up and we have less and less time in the office to give the answers. What we’re going to do in this series is we’re going to talk about those questions that come up.  If you don’t get your question answered, or you feel it is incomplete, then send me an email. dro@mybodyprotector.com and we’ll talk about it , figure out how to make it more clear. 

One of the most common questions is why does my shoulder hurt?  Now obviously there’s millions of reasons why a shoulder can hurt, but there are a few reasons that happen more commonly over and over and over again.  So if you have a shoulder problem you should go see your doctor, go see orthopedist, go see your primary care doctor and have them  examine you.   In my practice there’s three main reasons why the shoulder hurts.  1. arthritis, 2.  rotator cuff problems and 3.  referred pain from the neck.

Arthritis causes shoulder pain

Let’s start with arthritis.  The shoulder has the ball and it has a socket. The ball and socket can be the problem in arthritis which means the cartilage in between the two, wears away.  I like to say it’s sort of like the tread on a tire.  Over time we have wear and then that rough surface on rough surface is painful. That’s one reason why people have shoulder pain.  Obviously that has more to do with people who are older or people who have had shoulder trauma. We call that post-traumatic arthritis

the rotator cuff

The second reason is the rotator cuff.   The rotator cuff is a “cuff’ so people talk about it, some people say rotor cup or rotator cup or some sort of version.  This doesn’t really make any sense.  So the way that I like to explain it, a cuff like a cuff on your shirt sleeve, the cuff goes around the wrist just like the cuff of tissue goes around the ball and hold it into the socket. The rotator cuff is muscle and tendon.  So muscle starts on the bone and becomes tendon. A tendon attaches muscle to bone so that’s the rotator cuff.   Rotator Cuff

There’s four rotator cuff muscles.  I’ll go through the four just to be complete.   Supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor and subscapularis.  when we’re narrowing all this down if you have a rotator cuff problem it is probably the supraspinatus. The rotator cuff that’s most commonly injured is called the supraspinatus.   The cuff can be torn or just irritated.   If the supraspinatus gets irritated then the whole shoulder hurts and radiates down the outside of the upper arm. 

referred neck pain causes shoulder pain

The third reason is cervical spine pinched nerve.  When you have a pinched nerve in your neck then where that nerve goes is where the pain will be.  The pain go down the arm.  Usually that creates numbness as well, down your arm.  That helps us differentiate the nerve pain from shoulder pain.  

If you are having pain consistently that does not get better with rest, anti-inflammatories if you can take anti-inflammatories, then you should go see your doctor. They will be the best mechanism to sort it out and then give you a treatment plan. We will talk about treatment plans we’ll talk about other things other than rotator cuff through out this blog.  If you have shoulder pain go see your doctor. cervical