Let Orange County Pain Clinics help with Shoulder Pain.
Your shoulders are made up of several joints, tendons, and muscles. They require a lot of working parts in order to give your arms their complete range of motion. Any injury or condition in your shoulder or the surrounding areas can lead to pain:
- Acute pain
- Chronic pain
What are the causes of shoulder pain?
There are a number of things that can contribute to shoulder pain. One is bursitis, which is the inflammation and swelling of small sacs located in joints in your shoulder and throughout the rest of your body. Tendonitis, the wearing down of tendons that connect your muscles to your bones, can also lead to shoulder pain following an injury.
Shoulder pain can also come from arthritis, dislocation, a spinal cord injury, or fibromyalgia, a musculoskeletal pain disorder that creates painful and tender points between your shoulder blades and on top of your shoulders.
What are the symptoms?
The symptoms that you experience depend on the cause of your shoulder pain. For example, shoulder pain caused by arthritis can also include stiffness and swelling. The pain will develop slowly and get worse with time. Your shoulder pain may be felt constantly or only when you move your arm.
How is it treated?
Effectively treating shoulder pain requires identifying the cause of the pain first. Shoulder pain caused by fibromyalgia can be relieved with trigger point injections that use an anesthetic and corticosteroid. Other injections, such as nerve blocks that block the pain signals sent to the brain, can be helpful.