Pain in Shoulders

Esophageal Cancer

Tags: Cancer, Shoulder Blade
Posted in Shoulder Pain on December 7th, 2009 by Andreas Xavier

There is a type of pain that is called referred pain.  In a lot of cases, shoulder pains are actually a referred pain. This simply means that the cause of the pain of a shoulder blade is not necessarily caused by a direct injury inflicted on the shoulder instead the pain could be related to a pain originating from one of the organs in the body. Generally the location of where the pain in the shoulder blade occurs will be able to give a clue to which one of the organs are actually affected. The affected organ would then send out a radiating pain to the shoulder.

For instance, if pain is felt under the left shoulder blade, this could be a signal that there’s a problem with the stomach or other abdominal structures or in the chest. On the other hand, if pain is felt under the right shoulder blade, this may indicate some sort of disorder at the esophagus.

The main symptom of this esophageal cancer is the acute sensation while trying to swallow or when food gets stuck in the throat or chest. As the cancer grows, pain in the throat, back, breastbones and shoulder blades will start to intense.

Esophageal cancer does not usually show early signs and the pain between the shoulder blades is usually one of the later signs of esophageal cancer. What happens here is the pain that is generated from a series of activities such as painful swallowing, vomiting or coughing up blood would allow the pain to travel along the nerves to the shoulder, resulting to a sensation of sharp pains in the back, between the shoulder blades, which may depict the signs of advanced esophageal cancer.

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Arthritis

Tags: Rheumatoid Arthritis
Posted in Shoulder Pain on September 8th, 2009 by Andreas Xavier

Do you experience increasing shoulder pains while you do your activities? Have difficulty moving your shoulder fully? Do you hear clicking or snapping sounds whenever you move your shoulders? Or does pain strikes whenever the weather changes? If you have answered yes to either one of these symptoms, then you are at a high risk of having shoulder arthritis.

There are three types of shoulder arthritis: -

Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis is a less common shoulder arthritis. However, it is a chronic, systematic inflammatory disorder that attacks the shoulder joints. Such attacks produce inflammatory synovitis that will affect the articular cartilage and ankylosis of the joints. Simply said, the shoulder joints are affected by the arthritis thus causes the shoulder to ache. Though it may be less common but this could happen to people of any age.

Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis, also known as the “wear-and-tear” shoulder arthritis, is a group of diseases and mechanical abnormalities that causes a type of degenerative condition that destroys the articular cartilage. Once the disease attacks, the shoulders will begin to experience, stiffness, joint pains and locking of joints. When the disease advances, a slight movement of the shoulder could cause immense pain. This type of shoulder arthritis may be the most common of all but it usually affects people over 50 years of age.

Post-Traumatic Arthritis

Post-traumatic arthritis develops from an injury such as suffering a fracture or dislocation of the shoulder. Bone and soft tissue abnormalities may develop from the original injury and could affect the AC and glenohumeral joints of the shoulder. With this, all shoulder movements could cause shoulder pains. Post-traumatic arthritis is often a form of osteoarthritis and may occur relatively soon after the initial injury or it may even develop years after the injury.

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Heart Attacks

Tags: Heart Attacks
Posted in Shoulder Pain on August 11th, 2009 by Andreas Xavier

Shoulder pain is one of the classic signs of impending heart attack. Usually the crushing pain will begin from the chest and will spread to the neck, jaw and may eventually spread on to the left shoulder. In many cases, pain radiating on the shoulders are felt and the pain may be present for up to twelve hours.

The male generally experiences these classic symptoms.  Females on the other hand, frequently reported that pain between the shoulder blades are the more frequent first symptom experienced in having a heart attack.

Nearly 40% of women do not feel any acute pain in the chest while they might just experience some difficulty in breathing. However, more often than not they experience numbness and cramping in the shoulders and back. As the days lead up to a heart attack, spreading of pain from the shoulders to the neck and jaw occurs. Medical professionals have not been able to adequately explain while the female experience a different route of symptoms of impending heart attacks.

After recovering from a heart attack, the patient may be open to risks of being affected by frozen shoulder. Frozen shoulder or adhesive capsulitis is a painful condition where the shoulder experiences a severe loss of motion. Due to severe inflammation to the joint capsule, the loose tissue of the joint that allows motion would stick together which in other words causes a freezing effect. This freezing effect would then impose limitations to shoulder and arm movement. A simple action such as moving the arm in a circular motion could be locked from moving pass a semicircle motion.  The shoulder would hurt when shoulder movement reaches the limit of the range of motion and pain could be relatively intense during the night.

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Rotator Cuff Injury

Tags: Injury, Rheumatoid Arthritis
Posted in Shoulder Pain on April 10th, 2009 by Andreas Xavier

The rotator cuff is made up of a group of four muscles that connect the humerus to the shoulder blades.  This connection helps in the movement of arm lifting and rotating of the head. This group plays an important role to the upper body movement however it is frequently easily injured. One of the symptoms to such injury is having pain in the shoulder.

There are 2 types of rotator cuff diseases. These diseases may occur alone or in combination. Bursitis is redness, soreness and swelling of the bursa sacs and tendonitis is an inflammation of a tendon.

Inflammation that is resulted from rheumatoid arthritis may cause both bursitis and tendonitis to occur. A bursitis is most often the victim of an overused shoulder, which affects the joints and related muscles. When a shoulder is overused, irritation to the rotator cuff would lead to inflammation and impingement. Scoliosis might also cause bursitis although it is considered to be an infrequent cause.

When infected by tendonitis, inflammation occurs to the tendon. The sac of fluid, which serves as a cushion to the tendon is then damaged and the rotator cuff would thicken and would cause a squeezing of the rotator cuff. Usually the tendon experiences a sensation of being pinched by the surrounding structures of the shoulder joints. Most often, the tendon is most easily injured due to its position between the bones.

The shoulder would also be inflicted by pain when the rotator cuff tears. This usually happens when an injury is inflicted to one of the tendons. There are many forms of injury to the tendons but one of the common occurrences is having a hole in one of the tendons. This usually happens when the tendons in the rotator cuff are overused or it could be a wear and tear from aging or accidents. Patients of rotator cuffs injuries will have difficulty even in raising their arms above the shoulder.

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Shoulder Blade Pain

Tags: Muscles, Shoulder Blade
Posted in Shoulder Pain on March 12th, 2009 by Andreas Xavier

Aside from your leg muscles, your shoulder blades are probably one of the most common muscle groups which are frequently in use. Because they connect to the arm muscles too, you tend to engage them a lot whenever we do things such as lifting, exercising or even just stretching. The shoulder blades are surrounded by a lot of other tissue muscles as well, and when either on of these muscles gets injured, that is when you start to experience shoulder blade pains.

Shoulder blade pains can affect anyone, regardless of your age because everyone uses their shoulder blade muscles even when they go about doing the everyday things that they do during their daily life. Shoulder blade pains can affect the young, or the old, depending on what you do and what the cause of the shoulder blade pain is, because shoulder blade pains can be caused by a few different factors.

One of the reasons that you might experience shoulder blade pain – and this applies to the more senior citizens- is because when you age, your shoulder blade muscles tend not to be as strong as they use to be. And when you place too much stress on the muscles, it can result in aches and pains experienced because of the tension and pressure placed onto the muscles which is more than it can bear. So senior citizens, be careful about doing anything to strenuous, you don’t want to injure yourself.

Another reason for shoulder blade pains is due to exercise. Whenever we perform any sort of exercise that may be new to our bodies, we tend to experience muscle aches and pains the next day because of the stress the muscle went through, especially if you are new to exercise or a beginner. Shoulder blade pains can also occur if you strain your muscle too much it becomes swollen, inflamed or even torn.

So when you perform any sort of activity or exercise, be careful not to place too much strain on your shoulder blade muscles if you want to stay away from injury.

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