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305 Nakodar Chowk,Lajpat Nagar, JalandharFrozen shoulder is a condition characterized by a painful stiffness of the shoulder (‘frozen’). Frozen shoulder is common in middle-aged or elderly persons, but no age is exempt.
It often starts slowly but soon becomes so bad that so that the day-to-day activities of the affected hand becomes impossible. Soon the pain becomes permanent interfering with sleep.
Commonly, frozen shoulder happens without any good reason or cause. Although it is known to happen more often in people with diabetes or arthritis.
Frozen shoulder can happen following any shoulder injury or prolonged immobilisation to shoulder or following any pathology of shoulder like an operation, infection, etc.
The main symptoms of a frozen shoulder are pain and stiffness. Usually, it starts insidiously and progresses over weeks or months.
Initially there is a persistent dull ache over and around the shoulder. Later, pain gets persistent and worse with movements and often disturbs sleep.
Next important symptom is shoulder stiffness. The limitation of movement is barely noticeable at first. But stiffness slowly but surely increases. People complain of inability to comb hair or reach different parts of back or to the hip pocket. Later stiffness worsens and lifting the arm for overhead activities (like holding the handle of bus or train) becomes difficult.
Exercise is the key to the treatment. Physiotherapy loosens the tight joint, allows for useful shoulder movementand strengthens of the shoulder joint muscles.
Pain tablets, ointments help relieve the pain and inflammation in frozen shoulder. If the symptoms are intense or don’t improve over time, other measures may be necessary like an injectioninto the shoulder.
However, when everything else fail, a microsurgery operation (arthroscopy) to release the stiff shoulder is the ‘final court of justice’.
TThe idea of the operation is to release the tight structures in the shoulder andfacilitate normal shoulder movements. It is done under general anesthesia.
At first, the inside of the shoulder is examined by a thin telescope which is introduced through a small puncture (arthroscopy). The adhesions, scar tissue is removed and a stiff joint capsule is released to regain normal shoulder movements.
Shoulder movements and physiotherapy starts next day after the operation. After a few days the patient can go home and continue the exercise.