Torn Labrum

Doctor Marc Darrow, M.D., J.D.

Discussions from our Radio Show:

Caller: I have a tear in my labrum, I had surgery a few years ago and I am still getting a lot of pain there and I am desperate to avoid another surgery.

Dr. Darrow: Often times a torn labrum will show up on an MRI, but it will not be the reason for someone’s pain, something else maybe causing the pain.

The labrum is a little lip on the inside of the glenoid (the socket in the shoulder blade) which the ball of the humerus (the upper arm bone) goes in, the labrum is the soft tissue that helps hold the ball in the socket and very often it gets torn, I see them all the time.

We had a patient, he was a lacrosse player that use to fly in from the east coast once every couple of weeks. Initially he could barely move his arm, I saw his MRI, it was the worse MRI I had ever seen.

We did Prolotherapy injections to the proliferate or growth new tissue in the area and we tried to heal it up that way. After about three times he was back to playing Lacrosse again.

The thing is he probably STILL has a torn labrum but that was not the cause of his pain. My point is that you cannot look at an MRI to decide to do surgery, you have to find where the pain is coming from, the best way I think of doing that is a diagnostic injection of lidocaine to see if it can numb up the area, and if it can numb it and then put some dextrose with it then we know that the proliferent is going with the numbing agent. I think there is very good hope for you even with the torn labrum can heal you up. A future discussion will focus on a rotator cuff tear and other similiar injuries.