Shoulder surgery: How disabled will you become?
Hello
We see people with shoulder problems all the time, which is why people come to us first before going for shoulder surgery. Our clients think of us as the only place to go for their Shoulder pain.
I wanted to see how often are people satisfied after having shoulder surgery and of those, how many become more disabled because of it?
Let us have a look at what the research says.
The study that I will be discussing looked at the outcomes of 170 people who had rotator cuff tears who underwent rotator cuff surgery.
They found that “Women reported more disability both before and after surgery. Disability at 6 months was associated with a pain-limited range of motion, participation limitation, age and strength.”.
“Age showed a statistically significant relationship with disability in women. In men, there was a trend towards a similar pattern with older individuals reporting less disability in both sexes.”
“Women had more variability in their post-op disability which was more consistent with their pre-op level of disability. Therefore, it is more likely that a highly disabled woman would continue to report higher disability 6 months after surgery”.
This research would suggest that women who have this type of surgery are more likely to become impaired compared to men. The more disabled the person was before made them more likely to be disabled after.
Another finding is “Participation restriction remained a strong predictor of disability regardless of other factors in the model.”
The researchers found that if their pain prevented them from living their own lives, being involved with friends and family, looking after themselves and others, because of the surgery, the patient was more likely to end up disabled at 6 months after surgery.
What are you not able to do now because of your shoulder pain? Do want to risk surgery now, after reading this?
OR do you want to try something else first?
Jason
