Torn torn cuffs can be very painful, but does this pain necessarily come every day? Or can someone with torn cuffs with pain have some good days, i.e. days without any discomfort? According to my expert advice, the pain of a torn rotator cuff can also come and go, surprisingly.
I am a certified personal trainer and I was wondering if the pain from a torn rotator cuff could break. every so often giving the patient no pain for days. “They can definitely have good days,” says Edmond Cleeman, MD, Manhattan Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Group, P.C., Sports Medicine, Arthroscopic Knee & Shoulder Surgery. What surprised me is that when the rotator cuff is torn, a tendon (usually some rather than all) is supposed to be attached to the bone. it’s torn away.
How could this sometimes be without pain? I can understand this if he is still sick. The “good days” are signified by the patient using the shoulder and arm, and not feeling any pain at all, despite the torn rotator cuff.
“To make things even more confusing, many older patients are dealing with rotator cuff tears and don’t even know it,” says Dr. Cleeman, a founding member of Triarq, a community of orthopedists and physical therapists. “There are MRI and ultrasound imaging studies that have found that some percent of people have tear cuffs without symptoms. These studies looked at groups of people with no shoulder pain and no history of trauma and found that as people age (especially over 60), the percentage they had tears.
Tears in the rotator cuff are not always caused by a single trauma event, such as in weight lift in rotator cuff injury. For example, the strongest guy at the gym is playing volleyball on the beach one day. He jumps on the ball and jumps on the sand, he holds out his arm, he lies down as he slides into the sand. This is a great recipe for shoulder tendon injuries.
Thinking that he is suffering through pain that will persist after several days, he decides to do something urgent to bench, further damaging the nerves in his shoulders. He doesn’t go to the doctor and tries to lift weights and eventually suffers a rotator cuff tear.
