What’s worse, shoulder replacement or rotator cuff surgery? I don’t like to think of it as being worse. I’m a surgeon, so maybe I’m biased, but they differ. They’re both excellent surgeries that have excellent outcomes. In our practice, we specialize in shoulders and track everyone, a 95% success rate with each, but they’re different….
A common thing people think about with surgeries: what are some of the things I wish I had known before surgery? I can tell you with many of the procedures we do, especially shoulder replacements, where someone has had arthritis for many years and has been dealing with this nagging pain in their shoulder, and…
A common question people ask is can a brace help with shoulder instability? Not really, honestly. The one situation is like, let’s say you’ve got a football player and they’ve dislocated their shoulder and they’re just trying to get through the season. When a football player dislocates their shoulder and they want to go back…
How many dislocations of the shoulder can you tolerate before you have surgery? It depends on whether you’ve had one dislocation, your activity level, or where you’re in life. Sometimes, that’s too many for a young contact athlete. We almost always tell them, “If you don’t get this fixed, there’s a 99% chance it will…
A common question people ask is, can you lift when you have shoulder instability? The answer is yes, but often you need to modify it. You need to modify your lifting. It doesn’t typically exacerbate shoulder instability as long as you can see your hand. But every shoulder instability pattern is unique, and you need…
This is a good question. People ask what exercises you should avoid when you have shoulder instability. First off, keep it simple. Don’t do stuff that hurts. If it hurts, don’t do it. In general, if you can’t see your hand, right? Like right there, I can see my hand. And then I’m like pressing…
A common question people ask is how do you stabilize an unstable shoulder? It’s a great question. There are two ways to stabilize the shoulder. First, the muscles around the shoulder should be strengthened to create dynamic stability in an unstable joint, like therapy strengthening exercises. Second, operations repair or tighten the capsule around the…
A common question about shoulder instability is, can I fix it at home? You could. It’s all about efficiency and playing the odds and probabilities. If your shoulders are unstable, it’s a good idea to go and see a shoulder specialist to ensure that is the problem. The human shoulder is very complex. We all…
A common question people ask is what happens if shoulder instability is left untreated? First off, it may get worse. Second off, you can develop arthritic changes. What you can also develop is if you have a shoulder that’s completely coming out of a socket, you’ll start to lose bone. If you keep dislocating your…
What does a dislocated shoulder look like? The most common dislocation is the anterior. You’ll see someone holding the arm down, and you’ll see the deformity of the shoulder. It’s kind of down in the front, and they’ll have a ton of difficulty reaching behind, like internally rotating, because of where it’s at. They won’t…
