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:
“If the study of all these sciences, which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Judge Ginsburg’s selection should be a model—chosen on merit and not ideology, despite some naysaying, with little advance publicity. Her treatment could begin to overturn a terrible precedent: that is, that the most terrifying sentence among the accomplished in America has become, “Honey—the White House is on the phone.””
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)