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:
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 the initial schooling focuses on the hard sciences: anatomy, physiology, biochemistry. But once you get through that and are a practicing professional, you find that the emphasis shifts significantly.
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 … Read more
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 will cut to the chase and highlight two specific scenarios in which smoking can be bad for your bones.
Should You Exercise Before Shoulder Surgery?
The other day a patient asked me if he should exercise his shoulder before getting a shoulder replacement. A little background, the patient is about 60 years old and is an avid weight lifter. I was a little confused by the question so I asked him to clarify.
He thought that if he increased his shoulder and chest strength before surgery, this would make it easier for him to recover and for me to do the surgery.
Will Your Rotator Cuff Retear After Surgery?
Rotator cuff tears can be tricky. And unfortunately not all rotator cuff repairs are fool proof. Older studies showed that rotator cuff repairs failed to heal in up to 3/4 of attempts in some patients.
Newer studies tend to show more favorable results but on average still report at least a 1/4 chance of retiring of the rotator cuff repair.
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 … Read more
Physical Activity
Research has shown that the ability to walk unassisted is likely the single most important factor in maintaining your independence as you age. Targeting this simple metric may offer the secret to staying independent and new research supports this conclusion.
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.
Frozen Shoulder: A Team Approach May Offer New Hope For Relief
Frozen shoulder is one of the most frustrating problems for patients and doctors alike.
It’s painful, it comes out of nowhere, it causes sleepless nights and it often seems to drag on forever – 12 months is not uncommon.
As doctors we like quick fixes as much as you do. So it’s hard to see a patient come back to you for months on end and the best you can offer is: