Shoulder Pain In Elderly

Hello friends,

I am Dr Akhilesh Rathi I am practicing Orthopaedic and Orthoscopic surgeon in Dwarka.

Today I will be discussing about shoulder pain in the elderly, shoulder pain has been a very common problem and you must have heard that term frozen shoulder, heard similar kind of terms in your relatives or elderly people. So, these days very effective treatment for these kind of pain are available and because these diseases can be very debilitating. People are there who are unable to lift their arms to the routine course, so in these patients there are lot of treatment options are available if timely manage they can be done even in the non surgical way. So to start with the first and foremost treatment for most shoulder problems like the rotator cuff tendinosis and rotator cuff tear most patients can we manage with simple stretching exercises, range of motion exercises, shoulder strengthening exercises and some physiotherapy. So these patients recover well and they are able to manage their pain and regulate their routine with these exercises. Apart from these around 10 to 20% of the patients who do not improve with these exercises and are suffering from bigger tears or bigger problems, in these patients there highly advanced treatments are available nowadays. What we call as shoulder arthroscopy, arthroscopy means like you have must heard about laparoscopy where surgery is done in the abdomen through small portals. Nowadays, we can do surgery in the shoulder through small tiny incisions, 3 to 4 incisions and repair all the damage muscle in there. So even in those patients who are unable to lift their arm or move there arm or shoulder is stiff despite the physio, despite the exercises in those patients we can make it better. We can even think about having almost 100% normal kind of lifestyle. So I would like to restress is whenever you are having any shoulder pain, any stiff shoulder and it is not improving after 4 to 6 weeks then please do get it checked by an orthopaedician near you and most likely it will manage with physiotherapy and exercise and if it doesn't improve with physio, exercises I think you might need injection the shoulder or maybe orthoscopic surgery which can make it normal and which can repair the damaged muscle. Because if you delay too much, there are chances the damage muscle may retract and it may not be fixable even with the orthoscopy anymore. So the timing of your visit to your doctor is important, don't delay, don't ignore your shoulder pain, don't ignore your stiff shoulder. So because if you ignore it then you won't be able to operate and fix it arthroscopically, in those cases in which we done lake, the muscle has already retracted or is unrepairable then we need to replace the joint. So the best option is get yourself timing check, if your shoulder pain is not going in 4 or 6 weeks think about visiting your doctor and get it fixed and thank you all for listening to me patiently.

You can take my appointment online through Lybrate or any other online portal. I am available in sector 7 Dwarka, I have a clinic by the name of Rathi Orthopaedic and Spine Clinic.

Thank you so much.