Rugby
- Stinger/ Burner – Burning pain from the shoulder to hand/ tackling injury where the shoulder and neck are stretched apart causing tension on the nerves
- Dislocation/ subluxation – Normally caused by the arm being fully stretched out to your side and upwards/ usually requires re-location and possible operation if a recurrent problem
- AC joint – Chronic pain at the shoulder end of the collar bone/ normally caused by wear and tear and damage to the AC ligaments
- Labral tears – Damage to cartilage in the shoulder joint/ can be caused by scoring a try with the arm outstretched or by recurrent dislocations
Golf
- Rotator cuff – (as discussed earlier)/ an impingement of the tendons/ can be an acute injury or a chronic wear and tear
- Posterior instability (leading shoulder) – repeated swinging of the club can lead to overstretching of the muscles and joint at the back of the shoulder
- Anterior instability (non-leading shoulder) – an unstable feeling of the shoulder as the ball slips slightly from the socket (normally felt at the front of the joint)
Swimming
- Look out for a change in stroke pattern
- Pain in the recovery phase is normally an impingement (as mentioned previously)
- Pain in the pull-through phase is normally a labrum injury or a rotator cuff injury
What we can do:
The most important thing to do first is to diagnose what structure is causing your pain. There are a few very simple tests we can do to determine the cause of the problem, initially asking question as to how the injury occurred and any previous problems or injuries you may have had, and then moving onto examining your shoulder. There are some very simple “range of movement” as well as orthopaedic tests we can do that will give us a very clear idea about you injury. Once we know the cause of the problem we can then see about getting you back on the road to full fitness. Hopefully it’s just a case of a series of treatments as well as a course of exercises to promote you rehabilitation. It may be that your injury requires further investigation in which case we can refer you to a local specialist to discuss your options.
Tags: Shoulder Pain, Sports Injury