A shoulder labral tear is a tear to the tissue that holds the end of the arm bone in place. Most cases can heal with rest and physical therapy, but if symptoms continue then you’ll need surgery. At UVA, to repair the tear, we do minimally invasive surgery through a scope. Our sports medicine surgeons see many athletes in high school and college, as this is a common injury.

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Another very common injury that we see as sports medicine surgeons, particularly in younger patients, are tears of the labrum. The labrum is the cartilage that surrounds the socket in the shoulder and helps hold the ball in the socket.

When patients have a shoulder instability event or a dislocation as it’s commonly called, the labrum almost inevitably tears. Sometimes we can manage these without surgery, but very frequently the patients will go on and have continued symptoms of the ball sliding out of the socket. That will require us to do surgery to repair it. The nice thing about the surgery to repair the labrum is that it all can be done through a scope. So, minimally invasive with small little anchors that we put into the socket. Then stitches to sew the labrum back down onto the front of the socket.

While a challenging injury to manage upfront, these patients usually can return to all of their athletics with a very low risk of having a recurrent injury. However, it does take about four or five months for recovery after that surgery.

The sports medicine surgeons at UVA take care of high school athletes and collegiate athletes who have a very high incidence of having shoulder instability. So, it’s an extremely common injury that we see in all of our athletes, and we’re very qualified to repair them.

We’ve all done specific subspecialty training in fellowships to learn how to repair these. We also know when doing just a simple minimally invasive operation is not enough to keep that shoulder stable, and when we need to do advanced surgeries, such as moving a piece of bone over or open surgery to tighten the shoulder. So, it’s key to have surgeons that have done specific training in shoulder instability who understand when they can do a simple surgery for it, and when you need a more complex surgery to keep the shoulder stable.

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