Your shoulder MRI does NOT define you
We are back for round three and you can safely bet on the fact that we are in fact going to cover every single body part.
There are a lot of patients that we see that have been told to stop a particular activity because they have a partial rotator cuff and they were advised that it could potentially turn into a full tear.
While this may seem dangerous, studies have actually shown that people have partial and full thickness rotator cuff tears without any problems. Heck, they might not even know they had it in the first place if it wasn’t for being a participant of a study.
Conner et al.(2003) 20 elite level overhead athletes and scanned their shoulders, here were the findings(1):
40% of the athletes dominant shoulders demonstrated partial or full thickness rotator cuff tear(1).
The caveat to the study is that the non-dominant shoulder demonstrated 0% of those same exact findings(1).
Here is where it gets interesting…during a five year follow up from the start of the study, none of the subjects complained about any pain or reported any symptoms(1).
Lee et al.(2019) demonstrated similar findings in 26 asymptomatic elite volleyball players part of the US National Team, this is what they discovered(2):
23 of the athletes(88.5%0) had tendinosis(2).
17 of the athletes(65.4%) had partial rotator cuff tears(2).
13 of the athletes(50%) demonstrated moderate to high grade tears(2).
6 of the athletes(23.1%) had labral tears(2).
The authors of the studies stated “All MRIs showed abnormal pathology. These findings support the notion that elite-level volleyball players display asymptomatic shoulder joint pathology in their dominant arm, particularly of the rotator cuff and labrum, which do not limit their ability to participate”(2)
You’re probably thinking…well it’s just a matter of time before it catches up to them. Gill et al.(2014) looked at 30 older individuals from the ages of 55-74 years old which they divided into three groups(3).
The first group never had shoulder pain, the second group had shoulder pain in the past, and the last group was currently experiencing shoulder pain. Here is what they found(3):
No significant differences in degenerative changes in all groups meaning it was present in all three groups(3).
Tendinosis pathology and tears were present in all groups even the ones that never had episodes of shoulder pain and those that previously had shoulder pain(3).
Their conclusion to the study is “Shoulder pathology is apparent in both symptomatic and asymptomatic shoulders and clinical symptoms may not match radiological findings. The cost burden of ordering MRI scans is significant and the relevance of the findings are questionable when investigating shoulder pain.”(3)
So, what do we know?
We know that “abnormal” findings can show up in MRIs of people that are asymptomatic. We might even think to ourselves well maybe that might hinder our ceiling in terms of function but we see it with the highest level athletes that are competing on a national level as well(3).
Are you experiencing shoulder pain and need help getting back to high performance? We help people with chronic shoulder issues get long-lasting results because we focus on function, improve their mobility, and make them stronger than they have ever felt.
If you’re interested in seeing how our team can help you with your chronic shoulder pain then schedule a free discovery call here.
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