Rotator cuff tears are a common injury in middle to older aged adults seen in our Boulder Physical Therapy and Lafayette Physical Therapy clinics and can be atraumatic or traumatic in nature. Traumatic rotator cuff tears often occur following a fall, acute sports injury, or can be an acute on chronic tear in nature. This...
The vast majority of musculoskeletal conditions and diagnoses are not life threatening or time sensitive and allow for conservative treatments, including Physical Therapy, to be utilized prior to surgery. In our Boulder Physical Therapy practice we commonly see outcomes consistent with the current research on the utilization of Physical Therapy instead of surgery for common...
Symptomatic rotator cuff tears commonly occur in adults > 50 years old and can be either atraumatic or traumatic in nature. These tears become more common with age, but are often are found in shoulders without pain and often have similar MRI scan findings between symptomatic and asymptomatic sides of the body. Thus, the a...
The shoulder sacrifices stability for mobility allowing incredible function of the arm and hand. The downside of this mobility is an increased risk of joint injury after trauma including shoulder dislocations. These injuries most commonly occur when the ball of the arm bone is pushed forward and downward beyond its’ anatomical limits. The high forces...
Rotator cuff tears are a common injury in middle to older aged adults. Tears can be gradual or degenerative in nature associated prior injury (tendinopathy) or acute and traumatic from a fall or sudden trauma to the shoulder. The severity of the injury including tear depth and size, as well as, the number of tears...
Shoulder pain remains one of the top 3 reasons patients seek care from their primary care physician and Physical Therapist. The most common diagnosis causing pain among these patients is subacromial impingement syndrome. Impingement can be found along with rotator cuff tendon pain (tendinopathy) or partial rotator cuff tears on clinical exam and imaging. Impingement...
MRI testing of the shoulder is no different than testing in other body regions. Pathologies such as bursa changes, tendinopathies, labral and rotator cuff tears are very common in asymptomatic populations and tend to increase with an individual’s age. Many of these MRI findings do not contribute to a patient’s current symptoms and may be...
In our previous blog post we described how few (16%) partial rotator cuff tears progress over time. Understanding the non progressive nature of the injury allows patients an opportunity to explore non surgical options including Physical Therapy. In this study they followed partial rotator cuff tears over time, but a more recent study followed patients...
Previous research has found no significant difference at either 1 or 2 year follow up between Physical Therapy or surgery for rotator cuff tears. One disproven argument you may still hear against the conservative care of these tears is they may worsen over time including larger tear sizes or further movement of the torn ends...
We have previously written about the move away from arthroscopic surgery for degenerative meniscal tears and knee arthritis based on surgery’s limited effectiveness in the medical research. In addition, these surgeries have not been able to show greater outcomes than placebo or sham surgery. Until recently, studies have not utilized a comparable placebo group to...