Shoulder Arthritis Treatment - What Should You Know?

The shoulders are the most mobile joints in your body. Shoulder joints undergo wear and a tear over time and hence become unstable. Shoulder arthritis is one of the painful conditions affecting the shoulder joints. Arthritis not only takes a toll on the tendons and muscles but also affects the ligaments and joints too. They usually cause symptoms such as joint pain, resulting in limited mobility.

Treatment:

Nonsurgical or Lifestyle treatments:

1. Take rest or avoid the activities that provoke pain or change the way of your arm movements.
2. Physical therapy boosts shoulder mobility.
3. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen or aspirin alleviate pain and inflammation.
4. Corticosteroid injections in the shoulders can also help to ease the pain and inflammation, although temporarily.
5. Applying moist heat or ice packs over the shoulders for about half an hour at least thrice a day brings relief.
6. Drugs such as methotrexate can be administered in case one is suffering from rheumatoid arthritis (a chronic disease attacking multiple joints of the body).
7. Dietary supplements such as chondroitin and glucosamine may help reduce pain.

Surgical treatments (if your pain results in disability and does not lessen with nonsurgical options)

1. Join replacement surgery or arthroplasty involves replacing the damaged parts of the shoulder with a prosthetic (artificial) joint.
2. Few mild forms of arthritis may be treated using the Arthroscopic procedure (minimally invasive surgery). It requires a surgeon to ease the joint pain by making small incisions to “clean out” the joint. In arthroscopy, joints are visualised using camera introduced through a tiny incision
3. Resection arthroplasty is a method that involves the surgical removal of the bone from the collarbone and substituting it with a scar tissue to treat arthritis of particular joints.