Shoulder Separation
March 9, 2011 by Dr. Marc Darrow, M.D.
Filed under Shoulder Pain
Discussions from our Radio Show:
CALLER: I had a 4th degree shoulder separation accident from a bicycle ride, I had surgery on it. I have full range of motion but the bone does stick out. But occasionally I have aches from it and it feels like it almost feels like it is “asleep,” there is a strange deadness feeling in it.
Doctor Darrow: What probably what happened was as the bone separated, some of the nerves may have been stretched out or been torn. They may have been very superficial nerves that are not major nerves because you are probably as strong as you were before.
CALLER: My arm seems a little bit shortened, it is harder to stretch it out. My main question (my therapist) said that one of the ways other than the strengthening exercises to alleviate the pain was to actually put a lot of pressure on it by hanging from a bar and that would seem to me counter-intuitive because I thought it would hurt it, but it actually does help it when I actually hand and put a lot of weight on it.
Doctor Darrow: There are several things going on, when you stretch it you are allowing the area to open up a little bit, it may be “congested” or jammed together after the surgery and you may be stretching out all the scaring.
The good news is that you have a functional shoulder after that and that was a pretty bad separation.
You can get Prolotherapy to the joint area where the separation was and that would gain more collagen to the area, stimulate the natural growth of collagen there, it is very easy to do, nearly painless with a small, thin needle, see Prolotherapy injections.
