Rotator Cuff Injury Research Paper
February 10, 2014
Rotator Cuff Repair
A rotator cuff repair becomes necessary when a patient has unbearable pain, cannot sleep through the night, and has limited shoulder and arm mobility. The goal of this procedure is to reattach the torn muscles of the rotator cuff to the humerus. The rotator cuff is composed of four tendons that attach to the humerus and are continuous of four muscles that originate at the scapula. Each muscle has a name – supraspinatus, subscapularis, infraspinatus, and the teres minor, and any of these muscles can be damaged. “A rotator cuff tear usually occurs where the supraspinatus tendon inserts into the humerus. The injury can be superficial or can involve the entire tendon. Degenerative conditions, …show more content…
The most common causes for this injury include repetitive overuse such as swimming, basketball, tennis, and baseball, trauma, an abnormally shaped acromion, or shoulder instability. Other abnormal or rare causes would be subacromial bursitis or acromiclavicular arthritis. These injuries are more common in men than in women and they are uncommon in individuals under the age of 20. Individuals that play sports are more apt than others to injure their rotator cuffs because they are constantly moving and putting strain on those muscles. This is one of those injuries that an athlete does not want to hear that they have. Non athletic individuals tend to recover better because they do not use those muscles in such a rough manner, but for an athlete to get the full range of motion back to say, throw a football or pitch in a major league baseball game, it takes a year of therapy before they can even begin to train again. Rotator cuff repair is not a guarantee for an athlete to return to their sport though. “In 2006, Dr. James Andrews published the results of a study that showed that only one of the twelve professional baseball pitchers on whom he had performed a repair of a full-thickness rotator cuff tear actually returned to play at a high level.” (Geier, 2012) Most athletes, and also non-athletes will choose to try non-surgical methods of treatment before electing to have the surgery to repair their rotator
Rotator Cuff Repair
A rotator cuff repair becomes necessary when a patient has unbearable pain, cannot sleep through the night, and has limited shoulder and arm mobility. The goal of this procedure is to reattach the torn muscles of the rotator cuff to the humerus. The rotator cuff is composed of four tendons that attach to the humerus and are continuous of four muscles that originate at the scapula. Each muscle has a name – supraspinatus, subscapularis, infraspinatus, and the teres minor, and any of these muscles can be damaged. “A rotator cuff tear usually occurs where the supraspinatus tendon inserts into the humerus. The injury can be superficial or can involve the entire tendon. Degenerative conditions, …show more content…
The most common causes for this injury include repetitive overuse such as swimming, basketball, tennis, and baseball, trauma, an abnormally shaped acromion, or shoulder instability. Other abnormal or rare causes would be subacromial bursitis or acromiclavicular arthritis. These injuries are more common in men than in women and they are uncommon in individuals under the age of 20. Individuals that play sports are more apt than others to injure their rotator cuffs because they are constantly moving and putting strain on those muscles. This is one of those injuries that an athlete does not want to hear that they have. Non athletic individuals tend to recover better because they do not use those muscles in such a rough manner, but for an athlete to get the full range of motion back to say, throw a football or pitch in a major league baseball game, it takes a year of therapy before they can even begin to train again. Rotator cuff repair is not a guarantee for an athlete to return to their sport though. “In 2006, Dr. James Andrews published the results of a study that showed that only one of the twelve professional baseball pitchers on whom he had performed a repair of a full-thickness rotator cuff tear actually returned to play at a high level.” (Geier, 2012) Most athletes, and also non-athletes will choose to try non-surgical methods of treatment before electing to have the surgery to repair their rotator