Dr. Vinyard discusses common symptoms of a rotator cuff injury.

"A frequent question I get when patients come in with shoulder pain is ‘Have I torn my rotator cuff or caused some other sort of structural damage to my shoulder?’ And honestly, sometimes it can be very difficult to tell. Most patients with injuries to their shoulder, especially damage to their rotator cuff, complain of pain not so much in their shoulder region – but farther down in their arm. It's typically what we call ‘referred pain.’ It's just the way that the nerves relay that message to your brain – you tend to feel more pain in your arm. Patients typically have pain with reaching or lifting activities, especially overhead. Another frequent complaint from patients is that they tend to have pain at night.

When patients come in and I start to hear symptoms like that, I start to get concerned that you might have a rotator cuff tear. Obviously, I take a full history when patients tell me about their symptoms. We perform a complete physical exam. But oftentimes, the key diagnostic step is to obtain an MRI. The MRI gives me great quality information about the rotator cuff or possibly damage to the labrum or the biceps tendon – or maybe damage to the articular cartilage resulting in arthritis. Oftentimes patients don't really have any significant structural damage. They've simply developed inflammation in their shoulder which is typically a problem we can treat without surgery."

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