Ligaments play a key role in our body, connecting bones to one another while also stabilizing areas and limiting excessive movement. Because ligaments can handle a fair amount of stress during certain movements, and because a ligament tear can be a pretty debilitating injury, it’s imperative to be aware of how these injuries can occur and the best treatment options in the event you find yourself working to overcome a ligament tear.
Dr. Holloway and his team have helped countless patients manage shoulder ligament injuries, and he wants to ensure you do the same if you suffer a shoulder ligament tear. In today’s blog, we explore a couple different shoulder ligament injuries and discuss the optimal treatment protocol for these types of injuries.
Common Shoulder Ligament Injuries
There are a number of different ligaments housed in the shoulder region, all playing essential roles in stabilizing the complex joint and ensuring comfortable and controlled movement. Here’s a look at the ligaments that are most likely to be injured as a result of acute or repetitive stress:
- Acromioclavicular Ligament Injuries – Acromioclavicular (AC) ligament injuries commonly occur when someone falls directly on the shoulder area or hard contact to the shoulder area occurs. Your AC ligaments connect the top of your shoulder blade to your clavicle, and when there is direct contact to the area, this force can push the shoulder blade away from your collarbone, damaging or tearing the connective ligaments.
- Coracoclavicular Ligament Injuries – Coracoclavicular ligament injuries tend to occur following direct trauma to the shoulder that causes an injury to the acromioclavicular joint. This type of ligament damage oftentimes occurs alongside an AC joint separation or a shoulder dislocation, leading to instability or excessive movement between the collarbone and the shoulder blade.
- Glenohumeral Ligament Injuries – Your glenohumeral ligaments help to stabilize your shoulder socket, and they are often injured during a dislocation or when the arm/shoulder complex is severely twisted.
Treating Shoulder Ligament Injuries
Although your specific course of care will be highly individualized, most patients with shoulder ligament injuries will follow a similar treatment path. If the ligament damage is mild or incomplete, your doctor will likely recommend a combination of conservative treatments, with a heavy dose of physical therapy leading the charge.
Physical therapy is typically the first line of treatment because it targets the issue at the source. You need to help these ligaments heal, become stronger and stabilize the surrounding areas, and physical therapy can do all of that. Targeted strength training exercises, mobility training and motion control exercises all help to get the ligament back to a pre-injury level of function. Depending on the extent of your injuries, you may pursue PT for a couple of weeks or 3-4 months. Physical therapy is oftentimes paired with some passive treatments geared more towards symptom alleviation, like anti-inflammatory medications, rest, heating pads and cold therapy.
If you’re still dealing with discomfort or instability, or you suffered a more severe tear to the ligament, your doctor may recommend a corrective surgical procedure. During a surgical procedure for shoulder ligament tears, your doctor will work to reattach the torn ligament and artificially reinforce this connection so that the ligament can continue to heal on its own once the operation is complete. Oftentimes this procedure can be performed using minimally invasive techniques, and patients may be discharged the same day as surgery.
Your surgeon will provide you with a personalized rehabilitation plan, but there’s a good chance that it will follow many of the conservative methods previously listed. You’ll likely need to limit shoulder movement for a couple of weeks with a brace or a sling, but eventually enough healing will have occurred that the next step in the process becomes working to strengthen the ligament and regain shoulder stability. The best way to do that – you guessed it – physical therapy. After a couple of months of targeted PT exercises and gradual increases to your program, you should be able to return to all normal physical activities, although it may be a bit longer before you receive clearance for certain athletic activities or contact sports. Most patients can expect to make a full recovery following shoulder ligament repair, but your surgeon will be able to lay out your personalized expectations given your injury and other relevant factors.
Ligament problems can linger if you don’t proactively work to overcome them, so connect with a shoulder specialist and take the first step in your quest to overcome your ligament issue. For more information, or to connect with a shoulder specialist near you, reach out to Dr. Holloway’s office today at (865) 410-7887.
