A shoulder impingement is an injury of the shoulder muscles caused by a heavy impact, crash, or a sudden movement. The symptoms may include pain on top of the shoulder or the rotator cuff.
You will also feel pain while raising the shoulder or moving it. Usually, athletes suffer from shoulder impingement syndrome and its symptoms, but any accident can make us victims too and negatively impact our shoulders and its muscles.
WHAT ARE IT,S KEY SYMPTOMS?
You will be unable to reach your hands behind the back. Even if you do, it will be with great difficulty and pain in your muscles. Also, when you move your arms along the rotator cuff or move your arm out to the side in a sixty-degree arc, you will feel a surge of pain.
It is not easy to detect the symptoms and assess them yourself. You do not know the extent of your injury, and might wind up causing more damage if you are careless. So it is best you go to a therapist to get it checked out.
DIAGNOSIS: HOW TO DETERMINE WHAT,S WRONG?
When you go to a sports injury expert, they will do a detailed assessment by asking questions about your injury.
He will ask about your medical history and any previous injuries incurred to your shoulders. Keep in mind, going to a therapist is very important to locate your injury and to receive a full and correct assessment of your impingement.
The therapist will look and feel around your shoulder, trying to locate your points of pain. He will also look for changes in your skin temperature and for places with muscular tightness.
Afterwards, the therapist might want you to move your hands to see the range of motion on your shoulders.
He or she will try to locate for any muscle weakness while comparing your normal arm to the injured one. You will be the best judge as to what is okay and what is not. Let he or she know what you are feeling.
TESTS THAT YOU CAN TAKE:
There are different kinds of tests that a therapist/ sports professional will ask you to take in order to complete your assessment. A few of them are listed below for informational purposes.
1. Empty Can—
In this test, the therapist asks you to put your arms out in front of you at an angle of 45 degrees to your body and point your thumb downwards to the floor as if holding an empty can.
The medical professional will then ask you to slowly raise your arm as he will provide resistance to your movement. This tests the Supraspinatus tendon of your arms.
2. Neer’s Sign—
To look for impingement on the Supraspinatus tendon, the professional will try to position your arm with the thumb facing downwards to the ground, and again move your arm to an angle of 45 degrees to your body.
He or she will try to move your arms up to a position above your head. If you experience pain and heavy discomfort, there’s a chance of the impingement of the tendon.
3. Hawkin’s- Kennedy Test—
The professional will try to move your hands up and in front of you to an angle of 90 degrees, given that the elbow is bent.
They will try to rotate it and find the spot of pain between by turning the wrist down and the elbow up. If this gives you pain and discomfort, you have an impingement of the Supraspintus tendon.
TREATMENT:
Shoulder impingement syndrome can be treated by a lot of methods. You can simply take and ingest oral inflammatory medications, commonly called aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen which are the most easily available drugs to get rid of the immediate pain.
The response to these medications differ from person to person, so it is of utmost importance to first secure a prescription from a doctor who will recommend the best medication for you.
If the medication doesn’t work in a week or two, alert your doctor to how your body reacts to the medicine and get another one prescribed.
Daily morning slow- stretching in a warm shower might help, and you could slowly make your thumb work its way up and behind your back.
Don’t try to rush the process and avoid playing sports for a while; especially if you are an athlete, to stop receiving repetitive injuries in the same arm before recovery.
SHOULD YOU GO FOR IT?
You can feel uncomfortable any point of time. It might be when you’re playing on the field, and it may even happen when you’re sleeping.
Your doctor might recommend a physiotherapist for you who will help you work out by stretching your arm with exercises which will further strengthen the shoulder muscles.
If your symptoms persist and do not go away in a while, your doctor might recommend you a cortisone- based injection which is a viable anti- inflammatory medicine.
If that doesn’t help, the doctor will send you to get an MRI or an arthrogram done to see the extent of your injuries and evaluate a better treatment for you.
IN CONCLUSION:
A majority of people have been successfully treated with the help of anti- inflammatory drugs and injections.
Regular stretching exercises and avoiding further injuries until the shoulder has had time to completely recover are very important.
Nobody can take care of your body, unless you commit to it too. If you want to recover ina short period of time, follow your doctor,s recommendations.