By request: Shoulders

In a previous post craig asked me to comment about shoulder injuries, like the one affecting Hanley. Let me start with the usual disclaimer:

I am NOT a physician yet (2nd year med student), and even if I was, this information should not be construed as medical advice, or replace the expert opinion of a personal visit with a physician.

Sorry about that, I'm sure Craig understands ;-) If you want to read a little about shoulder injuries, click read more.

Shoulder injuries are notoriously complex and have a high rate of reccurence.

I hate shoulder injuries.

This is mainly because the shoulder is one of the craziest joints in the body, held by a small ligament, weak capsule, and 4 separate muscles, with little to no bony attachment of its own. Also, it has a high degree of instability. In fact, it's actually two separate joints entirely, the acromioclavicular joint, and the glenohumeral joint. Basically the AC joint goes from the scapula to the clavicle, and is the only body attachment to the axial (main) skeleton, while the glenohumeral joint has a partial round surface creating a ball-and-socket joint.

All this is neccesary to give the joint the incredible mobility that it has.

The problem is, most shoulder sprains at the glenohumeral joint (sprain is another word for small tear in ligamentous tissue), if they become severe, will eventually requrie shoulder surgery to shorten the rotator cuff muscles. Since it was a shoulder dislocation, it was probably more glenohumeral than AC.

Given that he's had more then one dislocation, it's my guess he'll have to have surgery eventually. Luckily he's not a picther, but he is a SS, and the motion of throwing a baseball is the absolute worst possible position to put an arm into for a person who is prone to anterior disloctions of the shoulder.

Short version: he'll be OK for now, but given his occupation, he will most likely eventually need surgery, which will probably be successful (given the he'll probably have a great surgeon and rehab program).

Hope that wasn't too confusing.

For more info on shoulder injuries, check out: this article. After reading it, I think I should have just linked to it originally, since it's a much better explanation than mine, but oh well. I guess I'll just submit this.

Update [2006-5-23 4:0:17 by fishfan24]:I just now realized that it's his left shoulder. This is good news, since the worst position is throwing the ball not swinging. It's still likely he'll eventually need surgery, but not as certain as I originally thought it was.