My mother has had pain in her shoulder for about a year.
She has been diagnosed with subacromial impingement and ruptured supraspinatus tendon via. MR.
The doctor wants to operate, but my mother is not sure.
Is there no way around an operation or could this sort itself out by training etc?
According to the doctor she will not be able to get rid of the pain without an operation due to her training and age.
He also says that the procedure is low risk.
Her main conserne is not being able to bench and train as she wants to due to the pain in her shoulder.
The pain comes and goes, some days are pain free and some days she cant wash her hair.
Benching, shoulder press, flyes etc. causes the pain to get worse if done with moderate to heavy weights.
She used to get pain when squatting also, but after switching to “thumbs over the bar” grip she has not experienced pain while squatting.
She is 57 years old and has been resistance traning since she was 20.
She is still training but with weights that does not promote pain.
She somtimes takes 25mg voltaren at night.
Sorry to hear about this issue your mother is dealing with. Sounds like she may have been “nocebo-ed” here.
We are in the process of writing a rather lengthy discussion on the topic of the shoulder. Given you mother’s age, it’s highly likely what was seen on imaging is normative aging adaptations. See A systematic review and pooled analysis of the prevalence of rotator cuff disease with increasing age. (Conclusion: “The prevalence of rotator cuff abnormalities in asymptomatic people is high enough for degeneration of the rotator cuff to be considered a common aspect of normal human aging and to make it difficult to determine when an abnormality is new (e.g., after a dislocation) or is the cause of symptoms.)"
Overall, the subacromial decompression surgery is being demonstrated no better than sham (placebo surgery).
Finally - surgery vs conservative management for rotator cuff tears: **Surgery or conservative treatment for rotator cuff tear: a meta-analysis. “**There was no clinically significant difference between surgery and active physiotherapy in 1-year follow-up in improving Constant score or reducing pain caused by rotator cuff tear. As physiotherapy is less proneness to complications and less expensive than surgery, a conservative approach is advocated as the initial treatment modality to rotator cuff tears.”