Shoulder pain is the third most common musculoskeletal injury, behind low back pain and knee pain (1). What makes the shoulder so bothersome is because it has high mobility and a significant amount of muscles and their tendons, ligaments, nerve pathways, and blood vessels. The first thing we think about when we have pain in the shoulder is: “I injured my rotator cuff!” However, that is not always the case.
Yoon et al (2023) discovered some interesting facts: 64% of people having surgery did have a tear in one of the rotator cuff muscles, 36% did not have any tears in the rotator cuff. Additionally, 68% had a symptom-free rotator cuff tear in the opposite shoulder (2). What this study shows is there is difficulty in fully understanding what is causing the pain in patient’s shoulders, even with the gold standard of a highly request MRI. (Check our BLOG post on MRIs for some very interesting information).
The shoulder has a wide list of injuries. Some of the most common injuries seen by physical therapy are: rotator cuff tendinopathy, impingement, biceps tendinopathy, scapular dyskinesia, labral tears, dislocations, and frozen shoulder. For athletes, shoulder injuries occur most often with repetitive overhead motions – baseball, volleyball, swimming (3).
