••• Featured Posts •••
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Do Shoulder Surgery Anchors Come Out? What You Need to Know
Why Are Suture Anchors Used in Shoulder Surgery? Suture anchors are small devices used to attach soft tissue (like tendons or ligaments) to bone. They are critical tools in modern orthopedic procedures, particularly in rotator cuff repairs, labral repairs, and instability surgeries. By providing a stable fixation point, they allow tissues to heal back to…
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Anchors Away: Tiny Devices That Can Help Your Shoulder in A Big Way
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When I am explaining rotator cuff surgery to patients, one of the most common questions I get is, “How do you repair the tear?” My answer typically involves an explanation of some basics about rotator cuff tears:
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Four Types of Patients
One of the most interesting parts of my job is that I get to interact with so many different types of people on a regular basis. Their different personality types color many of the decisions we make in the office more than most people realize. When you are studying to be a doctor, much of…
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Smoking is Bad for Your Shoulder Too
New Evidence: Smoking Also Damages Your Shoulder More studies continue to stack up showing that smoking has direct, long-term consequences for shoulder health. One consistent finding keeps emerging: smoking raises the risk of rotator cuff disease.A recent review looked at a wide range of studies and found the same pattern every time. Smoking makes the…
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Don’t Let Your Bones Go Up In Smoke
Most people know that smoking is bad for your heart and lungs. Few people know that it’s bad for your bones and joints. There’s a host of reasons why smoking leads to poor bone health. And I’m not sure how interested you are in the nitty gritty bichemical details of why this is. So I…
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Should You Exercise Before Shoulder Surgery?
Why Bulking Up Before Surgery Isn’t the Answer So I can’t recommend bulking up before shoulder replacement as a good strategy for making the whole process easier. What I can say is that learning how to use your opposite arm, getting used to wearing loose fitting clothes and figuring out how to do things one…
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Will Your Rotator Cuff Retear After Surgery?
There are many angles to this issue. Not all rotator cuffs that fail to heal actually cause pain for patient. But some do and this is why the issue still matters. So research continues on ways to improve our healing rates – a slow and laborious porcess. Identifying High-Risk Patients Before Surgery In the interim…
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When NOT to Repair a Labrum Tear in Your Shoulder
The patient was about 40 years old. My hunch was that she had a repair that never healed. The evidence was there: she already had one failed repair, a re-repair and her symptoms were exactly the same as when she first came to the previous doctor: popping, catching, pain with reaching across her body and…
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Walk More, Stay Independent: What the Research Says About Aging and Physical Activity
What a Large-Scale Study of Older Adults Found A recent study of over 1600 men and women in their 70’s and 80’s with mostly sedentary lifestyles aimed to examine whether a basic exercise program focused on lower body strength could help to maintain independent walking status in older adults. How the Exercise Program Was Structured…