Torn Rotators without surgery

[hoosier]

I believe the prognosis for non-surgical approaches depends a lot on where the tear is located, how severe it is, and what your symptoms are. What state is your bad shoulder in right now? Did your docs give you more info on what kind of tear you're dealing with? Surgical approaches aren't a magic bullet either: they require lots of time off and rehab and the failure rate is higher than you would like if you're going to go through all of that. So, if I were in your shoes, I would probably start out with the less invasive approach if you don't have the kind of severe tear that absolutely requires surgery. Based on the fact that you're even asking the question, I am assuming you have the garden variety, not the acute kind. Did it happen all of a sudden or has it been a gradual thing? If you hold your arms out horizontally so they're parallel to the ground, do you have enough strength to push up on the bad side against moderate resistance?

[Zool]

I believe the prognosis for non-surgical approaches depends a lot on where the tear is located, how severe it is, and what your symptoms are. What state is your bad shoulder in right now? Did your docs give you more info on what kind of tear you're dealing with? Surgical approaches aren't a magic bullet either: they require lots of time off and rehab and the failure rate is higher than you would like if you're going to go through all of that. So, if I were in your shoes, I would probably start out with the less invasive approach if you don't have the kind of severe tear that absolutely requires surgery. Based on the fact that you're even asking the question, I am assuming you have the garden variety, not the acute kind. Did it happen all of a sudden or has it been a gradual thing? If you hold your arms out horizontally so they're parallel to the ground, do you have enough strength to push up on the bad side against moderate resistance?

Correct, non acute. Held up against resistance. I've been (not nearly often enough) doing rehab for about a year. Yesterday I extended my arm quickly and got a searing pain for about 2 hours. Felt like the first one all over again. I assume I just need to do the rehab religiously for it to get better?

[hoosier]

Correct, non acute. Held up against resistance. I've been (not nearly often enough) doing rehab for about a year. Yesterday I extended my arm quickly and got a searing pain for about 2 hours. Felt like the first one all over again. I assume I just need to do the rehab religiously for it to get better?

I have a mild tear in shoulder labrum for years, and it acts very similarly to what Mad described. You can and should rehab it, but every now and then you are going to do something that aggravates it and then you will have days or even weeks of suffering. It's not something you can avoid unless you just stay away from that arm altogether--and then it will get weaker and more liable to get injured. You gotta train your brain to load SLOWLY with that arm: when you go to pull a gallon of milk off the top shelf of the fridge, do it slowly or you might tweak it. I put myself in harm's way continuously by coaching my kids's LL baseball teams. Every spring my shoulder starts hurting like the motherfucker. I do warm ups and ice it religiously, I pop high strength NSAIDs, and I still have a week where I cannot sleep through the night because the inflammation has nowhere to go when you're lying down. I guess it comes down to whether your lifestyle enables you to baby it or not, and your tolerance for pain. I don't baby mine, I have a high pain tolerance, and only once has the pain gotten so bad I wanted to put a bullet through my head. So no surgery for me.