Is Your Shoulder Pain Caused By Your Neck?

How many of you had shoulder pain before? Well, guess what? Some of the pain can be coming from your neck. Look at the picture above, see how close the shoulder joint is to the cervical and thoracic spine.

We have been treating quite a few patients with shoulder pain in our clinic recently so I thought I will do a short write up on this topic. Most of the patients had fairly recurrent generalized shoulder pain and all said they have been to other places for treatment but the pain always came back. Besides having pain in their shoulders, some of the patients will also tell us their neck is often painful, sore or achy as well, while others will not have any symptoms in their neck.

After asking many questions about their condition, we will proceed to do a very thorough physical examination. Muscles, joints, ligaments at and around the shoulder and the cervical and thoracic spine are included. We will also do an ULTT (or upper limb tension test) to check the integrity of the nerves. Depending on where the patient's pain is, this can give us clues about whether the ulnar, radial or median nerves are contributing to the patient's pain.

That's quite a lot to go through you might think as you are reading this. Well, that's the exact reason why we are different from other clinics. Instead of just treating the pain, we find out the exact cause of your pain (hence the need to be very particular and thorough during the physical examination), treat the cause of pain instead of just treating your pain. As we begin to move towards evidenced based physiotherapy practices, this is what we do so that our patients get the best care at Physio Solutions. So, even if you are not coming to see us, make sure whoever is treating you doesn't just treat your pain but treat the cause of your pain.

Oh, and make sure they teach you how to prevent that pain from recurring as well.

Reference

McClatchie, L et al (2009). Mobilizations of the Asymptomatic Cervical Spine can Reduce Signs of Shoulder Dysfunction in Adults. Manual Therapy. 14(4) 369-374.