Rotator Cuff Tear and Shoulder Pain
Any kind of pain can affect your ability to function normally and can decrease your overall quality of life. The mobility of our arms provides the means to complete daily tasks and work, but with repetitive movements, stress, and aging your shoulders can suffer injury.
With proper diagnosis and whole-body treatment, you can find relief and healing.
The Anatomical Structures
The shoulder joint is one of the most complex joints with only several ligaments and tendons to hold the head of the humerus, the glenoid cavity, and the process of scapular together. There are also a few bursas underneath the bony structure or tendons. The tendons are associated with muscles such as biceps brachialis, triceps brachialis, teres major, teres minor, infraspinatus, supraspinatus, and subscapularis. The last four muscles’ tendons form the rotator cuff.
Causes
Rotator cuff tears and shoulder pain are usually associated with joint inflammation, muscles, ligaments, and tendon injuries.
The most commonly seen causes are sports injuries, falls, weight lifting, over usage and repetitive injuries. Rotator cuff tears, tendonitis, osteoarthritis, fracture, and frozen shoulder are the frequent diagnosis. Sometimes it is a referred pain, pain caused by another problem, like a heart attack (left shoulder
pain) or stone and inflammation in the gall bladder, but in those cases, the shoulder pain won’t be aggravated by moving the shoulder.
The Treatment
Step One
The first key for success is to reach an accurate diagnosis, through injury history taken, physical examination, x-ray, or MRI.
Step Two
Rest and protection of the involved shoulder joint help avoid further injuries. The patient should get adequate treatment as soon as possible since a 40% of partial tear may eventually develop into a total tear. In case of emergency, the patient may need surgical repair with the following conditions: such as if the rotator cuff tear is larger than 50 %, dislocated fracture bone or fragment, or if major blood vessels and nerves are severed.
Step Three
Physical therapy, acupuncture, cupping, external applying Chinese herbs, and moxibustion are very effective in reducing swelling and pain, improving oxygen and nutrients supply with better blood circulation, eliminating inflammatory factors and strengthening muscles and ligaments.
The above modalities should be introduced as soon as possible, which can speed up the healing and patients can resume sports or daily activities much sooner.
Step Four
Because of poor blood supply to the joint capsule, ligaments, and tendons, the natural healing usually results in scar tissues and fat built around the injury site. The revolutionary therapy, Functional Medicine Therapy has demonstrated great hope for a close to perfect healing for the shoulder injuries because stem cells are not only able to differentiate as local tissue and repair the damage, they also secret growth factors and anti-inflammatory factors to speed up healing, according to clinical and animal research. In order to achieve the best result, the accuracy of injection sites.
Healing and Relief for your Shoulder Pain and Rotator Cuff Tear!
Healing and Relief for your Pain!
Call us and schedule your consultation appointment today. 713-572-3888