Good and bad news for shoulder pain

A new study has recently been published in a reputable journal JAMA:

The study included 602 participants between the age of 40-76 years old.

It included 492 people that were not experiencing any pain and 110 people that were experiencing pain.

Then they scanned everyone’s shoulder.

And you may be surprised at the results!

‘Abnormalities’ were found in both people with and without pain at the same amount. In fact it found that 98.7% of people had some form of ‘abnormality’. That means in this study only 7 people had ‘normal’ looking tendons on MRI.

These abnormalities included:

● Tendinopathies (25%)

● Partial tears (62%)

● Full tears (11%)

This was not the first study on this topic, similar findings have been found in previous studies (LINK - hyperlink to: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41308021/)

What this means

Rotator cuff changes are often a normal part of ageing and are not strongly correlated with pain or physical limitation for many people. They are more like wrinkles on the inside of the skin.

Try not to base treatment decisions solely on your MRI findings. If you are going to get treatment, MRI’s or other scans can be part of the story but they are at the end of the day just anatomy scans - not pain scans or disability scans.

The bad news

There is unlikely to be one simple explanation for most shoulder pain. As with all pain experiences it is going to be influenced by many factors.

That doesn’t mean that nothing works for shoulder pain, many things work for people with shoulder pain and a lot of options exist.

Find someone you trust, that listens to your story and helps guide you to recovery

Written by

Samuel Bulten

Exercise Physiologist | Masters in Medicine (Pain Management)

Director, Adapt Movement

Disclaimer

This ebook and the emails that follow contain general educational information only and aren’t individual medical advice.