Of all the joints in your body, the shoulder is the most mobile, capable of wide-ranging motion and great strength. These abilities come with a cost. Problems with the joint itself or with any of the soft tissues that surround and support the joint can produce discomfort or pain while restricting movement.
Treatment options for shoulder pain are expanding, including new biologic techniques that supplement your body’s own natural healing abilities. When shoulder pain interferes with your quality of life, it’s time to visit a dedicated pain management specialist like myself, Dr. Franz Jones, DO.
Board certified physical medicine and rehabilitation physicians like myself, are ideally suited to assess your condition and plan effective pain management routines that work for you. Here’s a closer look at shoulder pain and modern treatment options.
The ball-and-socket joint of the shoulder owes much of its range of motion to the rotator cuff, a structure made of four tendons. Any injury, strain, tear, or inflammation that affects the rotator cuff can cause pain and mobility problems for your shoulder.
Like all joints in your body, the shoulder is also susceptible to forms of arthritis. These degenerative conditions typically erode the cartilage that covers the ends of bones as well as other tissue in the joint, ultimately leading to painful bone-on-bone contact.
Shoulder pain can also arise from conditions like:
You may also feel pain in your shoulder that’s referred from other parts of your body, but pain of this nature usually has no connection with shoulder movement.
Traditional pain management techniques may be sufficient for treatment of some shoulder problems, particularly those that heal with time, provided you can remove yourself from activities that contribute to the cause. In the case of degenerative conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, conventional treatments may focus only on pain relief because there’s no way to cure the underlying condition.
Regenerative medicine modalities like platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and stem cell therapy assist your body’s abilities to repair damage. One issue with joint tissue like ligaments and cartilage is that they receive little in the way of blood supply, the delivery route for the resources of repair. PRP and stem cell injections add important biologic building blocks, allowing your body to work faster at its natural recovery.
Even when you have a degenerative condition, you may notice reduced shoulder pain and improved mobility with PRP and biologic treatments, which are derived from living organisms. If your injury is due to strain or overuse, you may find recovery times significantly shorter.
Perhaps the best part of these treatments is that they don’t interfere with your current pain management efforts. For example, you may find you require less pain medication by adding regenerative medicine to your treatment plan.
You could wave goodbye to shoulder pain sooner than you think. Contact Franz Jones, DO, to review your shoulder pain treatment options. Call the nearest of our three offices directly, or request an appointment online.
