7 Essential Things We Must do to Help Chronic Shoulder Pain

Shoulders are a particularly complex area of the body. Many of our Midtown patients suffering shoulder pain often come in to see us as their original diagnosis was incorrect and their acute pain changed to chronic pain. It’s an unfortunate but common problem because of the complexity of the shoulders. When we treat shoulder pain we go through a process of 7 main things in order to identify, treat and help the condition so the patient returns to full function and reduced pain.

Restore Range of Motion

Range of motion is the key to a healthy shoulder. We identify what has caused this loss and then generally give stretching exercises to retrain the shoulder to work how it should.

Remove Impingement

We look at correcting the scapula movements through some therapy to help activate the muscles around it.

Test Scapula Motion

Next we want to look at the motion of the scapula and we use a couple of methods to test to see which direction we need to go with the injury. We look at the mobility and stability in these two tests.

Education

Next we want to educate you, our patient and encourage changes to actions that are done repetitively. So we will look at some exercises for you and help to understand what you are doing that may cause the injury and then suggest alternative movements. This part is key in the whole treatment and recovery.

Positive Attitude

Something which is often overlooked is a positive attitude. We want to instill a belief that the patient will be out of pain or have their pain reduced to a level where it is not impacting on life. It is incredibly important to recovery (any recovery for that matter) that such an attitude be encouraged and undertaken.

Strengthening the Shoulder

We prescribe exercises to help the condition to lessen the pain and also to strengthen the shoulder. At first exercises will be gentle to help encourage the patient to do them, but as recovery goes on, we want to see these exercises progress. A little discomfort is normal, and while we want to push things, we don’t want to see acute pain return. So this will be monitored closely.

Continuous Movement

It is important to keep motion up and not to simply think that resting will fix the issue. Scientific evidence has shown that exercise and use is better than rest or non use.

If you have shoulder pain, or have any issues, please do not hesitate in contacting us. We are here to help you out of pain, to get back to the life you want to lead and to help you maintain and injury and pain free life.

Schedule an appointment or download call today.