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How do the symptoms of rotator cuff injury differ from a frozen shoulder?

By: Nick Bryant

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Alright, so you've hurt your shoulder but how will you recognise what you have done to it? To start with your shoulder joint is made up of bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons and cartilage. If someone had come up with the idea of the shoulder they would be winning awards for the design. There are three different involved, The humerus, the collar bone and the scapula all feature. There are Seventeen seperate muscles plus the tendons, ligaments and cartilage. A couple of the most common injuries to shoulders are a frozen shoulder or a rotator cuff tear and it is best not to confuse the two because the treatnments are radically different.

With a frozen shoulder the capsule surrounding the joint becomes damaged, resulting in scar tissue forming. The capsule contracts and any movement of the joint is painful. However, if you have damaged your rotator cuff then only certain movements will be uncomfortable. The rotator cuff is made up of four muscles that stabilize the shoulder and help to move the shoulder especially any movement above shoulder height. Your shoulder joint is a very shallow ball and socket joint. Without the rotator cuff to keep the ball in place, we would put our shoulder out of joint everytime that we threw or lifted anything. The rotator cuff are at risk whenever we are working at height, lifting or throwing. The commonest injuries to the rotator cuff are caused by repetitive movements, knocks or just plain wear and tear as we age.

I managed to tear the supraspinatus which is one of the four rotator cuff muscles. Sadly it is the muscle that runs through a channel of bone on the acromion (part of the shoulder blade), so when It tore and started to swell I ended up with a shoulder impingement. The result was pain whener I tried lifting my arm or reaching behind me with loss of strength in my arm. Tucking in my shirt, pint of beer, lifting anything off of a shelf became difficult and as time went by it became even worse.

As I continued using my arm the swollen, damaged tendon was now contracting whenever I used it and getting impinged inside the channel of bone. The gap that it normally ran through was now too small, so everytime I moved my arm in certain ways it was catching on the bone and getting more worn. So I had no choice but to rest it and wait for the swelling to subside. It is onlywhen you are forced to rest it that you realise just how much you use your arm and shoulder. You can't work through this because the pain is is telling you that you are doing more damage, eventually,if you manage to overcome the pain, you could end up wearing completely through the tendon all together and then there is a whole heap of problems.

Depending on how bad the injury is you may be advised to have an operation to free up the trapped tendon to allow it to heal. But Rest, treatment of the inflammed tendon followed by phyical therapy exercises to build up the rotator cuff muscles may be enough.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

If you found this article interesting check out my full story at www..myrotatorcuffcure.blogspot.com My name is Nick Bryant and I tore my rotator cuff lifting something that was too heavy. Despite being told that I would need surgery I have managed a full recovery with just exercise. Check out one of my other articles on the rota

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