A common question is how do I relieve shoulder blade pain? A lot of that depends on what it is. Often, when pain appears on the medial side of the shoulder blade, it can be something with your neck. However, we also see other disorders of the shoulder blade, like scapular dyskinesis, where we have…
A common question people have is, what does it mean if I have shoulder pain when I’m sleeping? First, it means that you have a serious problem and should come in and have it checked. Also, your quality of life is not good, so you need to figure out how to fix it. There are…
The question was, how do you check yourself for a torn rotator cuff? You really can’t. You need to confirm the diagnosis of a rotator cuff tear. You need some sort of imaging. Unless you have an MRI or an ultrasound machine at your house and you’re skilled in that way, I think it’s going…
The common question we get is what kind of tissue trauma occurs in reversal or arthroplasty. We come in through a deltopectoral approach, so no muscles are cut off. A subscapularis tendon, part of the rotator cuff, is often released and reattached after the operation. Now, some surgeons don’t reattach it, but I do because…
A common question is, what is reverse shoulder arthroplasty, and are reverse shoulder replacement and arthroplasty the same? Yes, they are exactly the same thing—”arthroplasty” is simply the medical term for replacing a joint. When performing this procedure, we go inside the shoulder and replace the worn-out joint with a new metal ball and socket….
A common question people ask is, what’s the most common complication after reversal or arthroplasty? With that question, the most common complication is infection. We go to extreme lengths to prevent that in our practice. The overall national average, I think, is around 3%; we’re less than 1%. Many things we do are use antibiotic…
A common question is, can you move your shoulder after shoulder replacement surgery? Honestly, it depends on which surgeon you choose. Many surgeons will ask you to stand in a sling for six weeks and do little motion. We are not that way. With our techniques, our rehab techniques, and the fact that we’re high-volume,…
A common question is, what is the most painful shoulder surgery? In general, the answer is rotator cuff repair. Things have changed. In our practice, we use multimodal pain approaches and rehab techniques. We use surgical techniques, and wand we have mitigated that massively. Rotator cuff surgery gets a bad rap. But if done in…
A common question you can ask is how long bed rest is after shoulder surgery, and the answer is zero. Zero bed rest. There are still physical laborers today, but most of our patients are knowledge workers. They work at desks and in offices, so they don’t require a lot of manual work with their…
People often ask what happens to the rotator cuff muscles after reverse shoulder replacement. The answer is nothing. People often get reverse shoulders because they’re arthritic and maybe have a large rotator cuff tear that can’t be fixed. It just depends on the indications. But we don’t do anything to the rotator cuff muscles. Shifting…
