Therapeutic Exercise and Orthopedic Manual Therapy for Impingement Syndrome
Since I treat a lot of shoulders in my practice this one strikes home. Sometimes common sense ain’t so common in medicine. Almost every shoulder patient I have seen in my office at some point had been given exercises to do. So long as they did them religiously, the problem stayed at bay. As soon as the exercises stopped the symptoms returned. It seems quite obvious to me that this is not fixing the problem–it is just compensating for it. Soft tissue techniques aimed at reducing scar tissue and restoring normal biomechanics is essential. I remember one patient with a complete tear of the supraspinatous tendon. With careful attention to the biceps tendon, this patient has full pain-free use of his shoulder despite the full tear.