SHOULDER PAIN CASE STUDY

This case study is about a 57 year old lady with right shoulder pain after volunteering to walk a dog for a non for profit charity organisation.

Mechanism of Injury / History of Presenting Symptoms:

Mrs M had her arm yanked at on the lead whilst walking the dog continuously for the length of the walk and felt soreness and weakness in her right shoulder afterwards. She reported the pain was predominantly in her shoulder but also radiated down into her lateral arm.

Presenting Symptoms:

The pain was triggered whenever Mrs M reached forwards, washed dishes or blow dried or styled her hair. Although the pain was not debilitating, it had been present for approximately four weeks when Mrs M presented to us and she felt it was significant enough that she needed to have it looked at in order to resolve it. Mrs M found that her pain was best in the mornings and got worse throughout the day the more she used it.

Goals:

Mrs M’s goals were to return to swimming, and go back to the gym where she saw her personal trainer for a full body work out 3xweek.

Treatment:

Over six weeks I saw Mrs M for soft tissue release work on her shoulder and gave her a progressive strength program to work on at home. I liaised with her personal trainer and gave her instructions around what exercises where suitable for her to continue in the gym while she was recovering from her shoulder injury. Mrs. M had to follow basic restrictions day to day such as avoiding reaching behind her body and avoiding lifting heavy weight above her head. I educated her about how to pace herself with heavier load shoulder activities such as scrubbing windows and handing washing. Mrs M was very compliant with her physiotherapy and had a really good outcome.

Outcome:

Mrs M had four treatments over six weeks and on her final visit to the clinic Mrs M had no pain or functional restrictions. She had completed all of her goals and wanted to keep doing her shoulder rehabilitation because it made her day to day housework feel a lot easier.