What you need to know about shoulder decompression
Shoulder decompression, officially called subacromial decompression, is a surgery used to repair shoulder bursitis. Bursitis is a painful inflammation problem in the shoulder joint area. It’s usually caused by pinching of the tendons of the rotator cuff. Some people have bones that are shaped in a way that causes them to have less room in the rotator cuff than other people do. Often bursitis begins with some type of shoulder injury that leads to inflammation.
Symptoms of bursitis include pain when you reach over your head, pain while you’re lying down to sleep at night, and pain on the outside of the shoulder or upper arm. Shoulder decompression surgery is always a last resort to fixing bursitis. Prior to shoulder decompression surgery, doctors usually try to treat bursitis with anti-inflammatory medications and rest. Ice can also help shoulder problems by relieving pain and reducing inflammation. Ice also stimulates blood flow to the shoulder, which helps it repair itself.
Physical therapy and shoulder exercises can also go a long way toward helping a patient avoid shoulder decompression surgery. Exercises help to strengthen the rotator cuff and retrain the shoulder joint so it works properly.
Most patients respond very well to non-surgical treatments for bursitis, but shoulder decompression surgery may be the next step if there is no response to non-surgical treatments in a couple of months. Doctors recommend that patients try non-surgical methods of treatment for bursitis for three to six months before resorting to surgery.
Shoulder decompression surgery is an arthroscopic procedure, which means that surgeons insert small instruments into small incisions to perform it. Among the instruments being inserted into the problem area is a tiny video camera, which allows the surgeon to see what he’s doing during the procedure. The surgeon also uses an instrument called a shaver to rub off some of the inflamed bursa. Surgeons may also remove some bone in the shoulder so the tendons inside the rotator cuff have more room to move.
Recovery time after shoulder decompression surgery is fairly simple. Although the shoulder is placed in a sling right after the surgery, movement of that shoulder can begin pretty soon after the surgery. Physical therapy to strengthen the shoulder can also begin within a few weeks of the surgery. In fact, doctors recommend that surgical patients begin using their shoulder as soon as possible, only limiting range of movement by the amount of discomfort they feel. This will help patients recover a full range of motion much sooner and get back to everyday activities much quicker.
It’s very important that the patient works to recover full range of motion as soon as possible after the surgery because otherwise, the patient will experience a lot of shoulder pain later on due to stiffness in the shoulder. This pain can be just as bad as the original problem which caused the surgery in the first place, so all efforts should be placed on recovering range of motion very quickly.