Rotator Cuff And Acupuncture

Rotator cuff is a set of four muscle surrounding your shoulder joint. The essentially function to stabilize your shoulder joint and are most active muscles of your shoulder. These muscles also work in synchrony with other muscles of shoulder joint such as deltoid, teres major, coracobrachialis when you are engaged in dynamic motion such as overhead reaching, throwing a ball or even lifting heavy weights.

 The four rotator cuff muscles are supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor and subscapularis. These muscles attach to head of humerus (arm bone) through tendons (thickened part of muscle that attaches muscle to bone). Apart from muscles and tendons, shoulder joint is stabilized by capsules, bursa and ligaments.

Mechanism of injury

They can be injured secondary to acute trauma, chronic overuse at work or sports or even as part of aging process.

Symptoms

Typical symptoms of rotator cuff injury are night pain, dull diffuse aching/ sharp paroxysmal spasms, difficulty in reaching onto back pocket, blowing hairdryer or combing, putting on a shirt or strapping up bra, putting on seat belt and lying on side. 

Treatment

Registered Physiotherapist does a baseline assessment to get an idea about severity of your injuries and functional restrictions. Different approaches for treating this kind of injury are manual therapy, soft tissue release, deep transverse friction massage, electrical modalities, kinesio-taping, use of hawk tool, corrective exercises, acupuncture. 

Acupuncture treatment involves use of sterile needles to stimulate specific points in skin to accelerate the healing process. They stimulate the underlying nerves or muscles that enhances the release of natural pain killers know as endorphins and also get more blood to the area. Improved blood flow further enhances the healing process by eliminating the pain provocative inflammatory substance at the area of injury. Thin needles ensure that there is very minimal or no discomfort at point of insertion.  Acupuncture treatment can be used to treat different musculoskeletal injuries such as rotator cuff tendinitis/tear, tennis elbow, golfers elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome, hip bursitis, ankle sprain, patellar tendon injury.