It often wakes you up at night and no position seems to give you relief; or it occurs when you make very normal movements, such as lifting your arm or wearing a jacket. The shoulder pain – that spread within the population is second only to back pain – it’s really annoying and when it becomes chronic, it can limit your mobility.
When in shape, the shoulder joint allows us to do as many as 16,000 movements! But in case of painful shoulder we begin to avoid doing all those that activate the pain and, slowly, this anatomical area becomes more and more rigid shoulder pain singapore.
It is therefore very important to contact the general practitioner and specialist as soon as possible, to understand where the pain originates from and to take action.
But what are the possible causes of painful shoulder? There are really a lot of them. Here we will talk about the most common.
The possible causes of shoulder pain
Doctors once attributed shoulder pain to periarthritis, a classification that indicated the presence of inflammation. In fact, we now know that the most common cause of painful shoulder is subacromial impingement syndrome.
What is it about? To explain this, let’s take a quick trip into the anatomy of the shoulder. In this area we have the scapula, the extension of which is called the acromion (a bone that articulates with the clavicle giving life to the acromion-clavicular joint). Just under the acromion pass the tendons of the muscle-tendon complex called the rotator cuff, which surround the head of the humerus and have the important function of stabilizing the point where the latter articulates with the scapula (scapulo-humeral joint or, more simply, shoulder joint) and thus allow a series of movements, such as lateral lifting, elevation and rotation of the arm.
For these tendons to move smoothly they need to have enough space. Sometimes, however, it happens that the acromion is thicker than it should be. It depends on the constitution, nothing can be done about it, but this condition decreases the space and leads to friction between the tendons and the acromion bone itself. And this explains what subacromial conflict is.
This causes the rotator cuff tendons to wear out over time , become inflamed and eventually ruptured.
Another common cause of painful shoulder is osteoarthritis, a degenerative process affecting the cartilages of the articular surfaces.
