Frozen Shoulder

‘Frozen shoulder’ is the most abused diagnosis. Literally any pain in the shoulder is labelled as ‘Frozen shoulder’, and treated with complacence as it is believed that frozen shoulder has a self-resolving course. Fact is, that a large number of painful shoulders are not frozen shoulders in the first place. There are other causes of shoulder pain which have a different course and treatment. Hence it is important to have a proper diagnosis of a case of painful shoulder.

True ‘Frozen shoulder’ is a disease of unknown reason, where the shoulder becomes painful and develops restriction of movements. A classical frozen shoulder goes through three phases – phase of pain followed by phase of stiffness followed by phase of resolution - approximately 3 months each. The treatment is essentially physiotherapy. In today’s fast world nobody has time to wait and suffer for 9 months and more. Hence we have devised a speedy recovery protocol for treatment of frozen shoulder. It consists of the following components:

• Physiotherapy, including advanced techniques such as CPM machine. We use CPM machine liberally for mobilising these shoulders, and it works wonders.
• Injection in the shoulder joint: This is a well- established mode of cutting short the duration of recovery and reduce pain. Vast majority of patients with frozen shoulder respond to this treatment.
• Mobilisation under short anaesthesia: Some resistant cases, need mobilisation under general anaesthesia. It is a small procedure taking 10 minutes, but has to be done under anaesthesia.
• Arthroscopic surgery: In some highly recalcitrant frozen shoulder, who just do not respond to above lesser interventions, arthroscopic shoulder release is required. This is a key-hole surgery, done under anaesthesia.