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Shoulders are, in some ways, a marvel. One shoulder has 4 separate joints, full of muscle groups, that permit us to maneuver our arm in eight totally different main methods, giving us probably the most levels of freedom of any joint within the physique. We are able to swim, toss, hug, and even punch due to the motion our shoulders allow.
However the identical complexity that enables us such movement additionally presents alternatives for ache when one thing goes incorrect. One other complication: shoulders change as we age, and new varieties of accidents include them. Medical practitioners face the daunting activity of maintaining with the most recent developments to deal with a spread of accidents as broad as Michael Phelps’ wingspan.
“It’s not that shoulder problems are unique to one particular age or one particular group of individuals, but rather that they can arise throughout our lifetimes,” mentioned Paul Salamh, visiting affiliate professor of rehabilitation sciences at Tufts College Faculty of Drugs. “Because we ask our shoulders to do so much, they’re vulnerable to a wide range of issues.”
It can be a problem for well being care suppliers to maintain up with all the newest evidence-based analysis on treating shoulder accidents. That is why Salamh served because the lead creator on two lately printed papers, the analysis for which was carried out whereas he labored on the College of Indianapolis, about efforts to assist coalesce this data and make it simpler for everybody to grasp.
In a paper printed lately within the Worldwide Journal of Sports activities Bodily Remedy, Salamh and different researchers carried out a scientific evaluation of 19 papers on shoulder accidents. That evaluation included 4 research encompassing 7,802 athletes in baseball, handball, swimming, tennis, cricket, American soccer, and in addition multi-sport athletes and folks within the navy.
The rationale to deal with athletes, Salamh mentioned, was as a result of the speed of shoulder and elbow ache in athletes in these “overhead” sports activities is rising. A 2022 examine estimated that almost 11% of athletes between the ages of 5 and 18 years outdated expertise a shoulder harm.
General, the analysis crew discovered 5 danger components for athletes growing shoulder ache, two that may’t be modified (native and regional musculoskeletal ache) and three that may (vary of movement, energy, and coaching load).
“These findings are supportive of a drilling-down approach to risk factors specific to body region, sport, and where applicable, the position played in that sport,” mentioned Salamh, who additionally serves as director of analysis for the Physician of Bodily Remedy Phoenix program on the Faculty of Drugs.
“There is a lot that can be looked at specifically in each sport. For example, the range of motion that would predispose a swimmer to a shoulder injury is different than that for someone playing lacrosse,” he mentioned, including that the identical is true with energy of muscle or muscle teams inside a specific sport.
In a paper printed lately within the Journal of Guide and Manipulative Remedy, Salamh and a crew of researchers addressed a decade’s price of analysis on the danger components, etiology, prognosis, and administration of frozen shoulder, an inflammatory situation that causes unrelenting stiffness and ache within the shoulder that may final for years.
For this paper, 14 worldwide specialists mentioned and recognized doable danger components for the situation and signs that almost all typically result in a prognosis. Additionally they examined 33 totally different therapy choices and categorized them into effectiveness for treating frozen shoulder in its earlier levels, when ache is extra outstanding than stiffness; and later levels, when stiffness is a much bigger drawback than ache.
“The treatment we would intervene with varies significantly depending on the stage of the condition,” Salamh mentioned. “Depending on where they are in this process, we could be doing something that could be more painful and create more problems for individuals than be helpful.”
General, Salamh hopes that all these papers and future analysis can result in a greater understanding of what this distinctive joint requires to remain wholesome alongside the course of our lives.
“We want to take the complexity of the shoulder and not simplify it but make it more manageable and digestible for patients, clinicians, and researchers,” he mentioned.
Extra data:
Paul Salamh et al, Threat Elements Related to New Onset of Shoulder Ache and Damage Among the many Athletic Inhabitants: A Systematic Overview of the Literature, Worldwide Journal of Sports activities Bodily Remedy (2025). DOI: 10.26603/001c.129462
Paul Salamh et al, A world consensus on the etiology, danger components, prognosis and Administration for people with Frozen Shoulder: a Delphi examine, Journal of Guide & Manipulative Remedy (2025). DOI: 10.1080/10669817.2025.2470461
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Shouldering the burden: Analysis paints a greater image of accidents that occur to an often-vexing joint (2025, April 10)
retrieved 10 April 2025
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