Frozen shoulder

Alternative Names

Adhesive capsulitis

What is Frozen shoulder

Frozen shoulder is a common, painful condition that affects the ability to move the shoulder and characterized by stiffness and pain in your shoulder joint. Your risk of having frozen shoulder increases if you are recovering from a medical condition or procedure that impacts on the mobility of your arm, e.g. a stroke or a mastectomy. A frozen shoulder is a shoulder joint with significant loss of its range of motion in all directions. The range of motion is constricted not only when the patient attempts motion but also when the doctor attempts to move the joint fully while the patient relaxes.

Signs and symptoms

Frozen shoulder usually develops gradually. It has 3 stages. Each of these stages can last a number of months.

• painful stage: pain occurs with any movement of your shoulder, and your shoulder's range of motion starts to become limited
• frozen stage: pain may begin to diminish during this stage
• thawing stage: during the thawing stage, the range of motion in your shoulder begins to improve

Possible complications

Complications include persistent stiffness and pain despite therapy. If there is forceful manipulation of the shoulder during surgery, the arm can break.

What causes

Frozen is caused by inflammation, scarring, thickening and shrinkage of the capsule that surrounds the normal shoulder joint. Any injury to the shoulder can cause a frozen shoulder, including tendinitis, bursitis and rotator cuff injury (rotator cuff syndrome). Frozen shoulders usually occur in people with risk factors of diabetes, chronic inflammatory arthritis of the shoulder or after chest or breast surgery. One more trigger is long-term immobility of the shoulder joint.

Prevention

The best way of treatment is exercising. As soon as you noticed that you have pain in your shoulders, consult your doctor which measures you should take to prevent frozen shoulders.

Treatment

The goal of treatment is to control shoulder pain and preserve as much range of motion in the shoulder as possible. The treatment plan should be determined by your doctor.

You doctor may recommend you the following ways of treating frozen shoulder:

• medications (over-the-counter pain relievers such as aspirin and ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, others), can help reduce pain and inflammation associated with frozen shoulder)
• therapy
• surgical and other procedures