Treatment
The main source of shoulder pain, shoulder arthritis, is first managed in early stages with physical therapy and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drugs. Surgery is considered if pain worsens. There are two primary methods for shoulder replacement; total shoulder replacement and reverse shoulder replacement. Total shoulder replacement involves a replacement of the ball and socket joint. A metal ball is used to replace the humeral head and a plastic socket replaces the cartilage on the glenoid cavity. Once complete this method looks and functions like the original joint.
A reverse shoulder replacement is used to treat patients with severe damage or arthritis of the shoulder joint. It involves the insertion of a metal ball section to the glenoid instead of the humerus and the socket section being added to the humerus. This method allows the arm to be moved primarily by the deltoid instead of the rotator cuff.
Non surgery options are preferred treatment for a variety of reasons. Besides not wanting to risk the usual risks of surgery such as infection, shoulder replacement can lead to a variety of complications including rotator cuff tear and glenohumeral instability. However despite these risks, shoulder replacement shows promise with a low rate of complication which depending on the type of surgery is close to 5%.
Read more about this topic: Shoulder Replacement
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts.... The question “Why did you start using narcotics in the first place?” should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,—the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man’s treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)