Monday 4 August 2014

Rotator Cuff Injuries - Palumbo Sports Medicine

One of the most common causes for visiting an orthopedic specialist is for rotator cuff injuries. Rotator cuff injuries have become more and more common as people’s exercises have become more repetitive and strenuous. Though it is most likely to adapt a rotator cuff injury from repetitive exercise, it is still possible to still injure your rotator cuff by sudden incidents. Some widely known risk factors of these tears are largely caused by the normal use of the rotator and age. As well, careers such as carpentry, or athletes such as tennis and baseball players, are much more at risk of tearing their rotator cuff than an average person just falling.
Palumbo Sports Medicine
 There are usually symptoms that come along with a rotator cuff tear, which if you notice any of these symptoms happening to you, you should visit your sports medicine physician or a sports injury clinic as soon as you notice them. Some of the most common symptoms of a rotator cuff tear comprise of pain while resting, lifting/lowering your arm, weakness when lifting or rotating your arm and or a crackling feeling. These symptoms will vary based on the person, however, they’re usually more intensified if a tear occurred more suddenly compared to a tear that develops from overuse. A tear caused to overuse is more likely to feel symptoms such as weakness or radiating pain down your arm when you move or lift the injured arm. The pain symptoms from overuse will likely occur randomly compared to an injury on impact.

Sports doctors and orthopedic surgeons help these symptoms in many ways. Most sports physicians will go through your symptoms with you to pin point that it is a tear in your rotator cuff and that the pain isn’t a pinched never coming from your neck. Once your sports doctor recognizes the injury as a tear, they will likely send you for x-rays, ultrasound, or an MRI, to confirm the diagnosis. Once a patient is confirmed to have a rotator cuff tear the orthopedic surgeon will advise a few different plans of action in order to stop your pain and help your injury get better. Early treatment can prevent the symptoms of a tear from getting worse. Some preventative advice that your sports medicine physician may give to help treat the pain could include: rest, modifying your activity, strengthening exercises/physical therapy, and anti-inflammatory medication.

However, if treatment doesn’t reduce pain and restore function as planned, there are countless other options for a rotator cuff injury. Sports physicians and orthopedic surgeons work with rotator cuff injury patients multiple times a day. Therefore the best sports doctors know what procedures may fit best with your lifestyle. For example, arthroscopic surgery is a very short recovery time, low stress procedure with really successful results. Be sure to check in with your sports medicine physician or orthopedic surgeon as soon as you feel these symptoms.

No comments:

Post a Comment