6 Causes of Shoulder Pain and How We Can Help You Wave Goodbye to the Discomfort

Swing your arms around for a moment — forward and back, up and down, and side to side — and admire the incredibly wide range of motion your arms and hands enjoy. This impressive ability is due to the fact that your shoulders are inherently unstable joints with a shallow socket. Unfortunately, this also means that shoulders can be easily damaged and injured.

If you’re dealing with shoulder pain, Dr. Naveen Reddy, Dr. Maziar Massrour, and the rest of the team here at Apex Pain Specialists are here to help. To start, we want to discuss a few of the more common culprits behind shoulder pain and then we’ll get into how we can help you wave goodbye to the discomfort.

Shoulder anatomy 101

Before we dive into common causes of shoulder pain, let’s first conduct a quick review of the anatomy of these major joints. As we mentioned, your shoulders are shallow ball-and-socket joints that attach your arms to your body.

More specifically, the top of your humerus fits into a shallow socket in your shoulder blade, or scapula. The connective tissues that keep the ball and socket together are called the rotator cuff. Lastly, your shoulder also contains bursa sacs that help to prevent friction between the hard and soft tissue inside the joint.

Common shoulder problems

Now that we’ve reviewed the anatomy of these large joints, let’s get into some of the more common and chronic problems that can develop in your shoulders, including:

1. Shoulder osteoarthritis, which affects 30% of people over the age of 60
2. Rotator cuff tears, which send 2 million Americans to seek medical help each year
3. Shoulder dislocation
4. Shoulder impingement
5. Bursitis — inflammation in the bursa sacs
6. Tendinitis or tendinosis of the rotator cuff

This list accounts for the majority of shoulder issues that can lead to chronic pain.

Your treatment options for shoulder pain

If you’re dealing with chronic shoulder pain and you want relief, we offer several different treatments. We want to emphasize that we are not an orthopedic practice — our role is to reduce pain and improve function.  If your shoulder pathology is severe and not responding to non-operative measures, we can provide a referral to an orthopedic surgeon.  Treatments typically consist of the following:

• Corticosteroid joint injections to reduce inflammation and relieve pain
• Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections to reduce inflammation and promote healing
• Physical therapy

As you can see, we have a number of modalities in which we can help you regain pain-free use of your arms again. There are also ways in which you can relieve your shoulder pain at home through ice and heat therapies, as well as targeted exercises, which we can provide.

The bottom line is that figuring out what is causing your shoulder pain and the best treatment option is just a phone call or click away. To get started, please call our office in Chandler, Arizona, at 480-820-7246 or book an appointment online with Apex Pain Specialists today.