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Diagnosing Shoulder Pain [Video]

Ask the Expert | Shoulder

Video Transcription:

So shoulder pain can be a fairly complex issue to deal with. There’re multiple areas around the shoulder that can cause discomfort. So the first thing we do is kind of figure out where does the patient hurt the most? And that kind of leads us down the path of, “OK, there’re certain anatomical structures that are in that area. Let’s take a little deeper dive.” Once we start getting some information either from X-rays or maybe from an MRI scan, we can really start to figure out, OK, this is probably what’s causing their pain. I often tell patients, “You can have one 50-pound rock in a bucket. So one big problem, or you can have five 10-pound rocks in the bucket, right? They both feel the same. So you can have multiple small issues, or you can have one big issue, but cumulatively it just feels like, ‘Oh, my shoulders are really uncomfortable.'” So once we figure out kind of what’s causing the pain, then we can start thinking about treatment options.

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