Pain in Shoulders

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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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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