Shoulder Injury - Labrum Tear

I was wondering about swimming damaging other parts of the body. I had a severe stomach pain and had to rest a little in bed. I cut the yardage down recently and now an swimming slowly. The sprints made me very sore. So, how can you tell if you need to see a doctor for your shoulder or knees or stomach or groin for injuries.

I had never heard of a SLAP tear until I learned that I had one! Then of course I started hearing all kinds of stories about swimmers with SLAP tears. I'm 34 and have been swimming competitively most of my life and fortunately had never had any problems or injuries. In November of 2002 I began having pain in my left shoulder. I nursed it along for maybe 8 months (including both SC and LC Nats!) before doing anything about it. I changed my workouts to be 100% quality with no wasted yards because I felt like it was the repetitions that were killing me. Anyway, went through an MRI that revealed nothing, two different cortisone shots that did nothing and physical therapy for about 6 weeks that did nothing. Than I had a dye MRI done which revealed the tear. Had surgery on December 18th and am now in my sling for another couple weeks. Good points have been made above about the actual surgery (very little pain for the first day or two but then it can be rather painful). I had some sort of pain pump for 48 hours after surgery. Basically an IV drip that is spring loaded and automatically feeds you some liquid pain med directly into the shoulder. After 48 hours it runs dry and they take it out. It fits nicely inside your sling and I believe it helped quite a bit. I was off the pain meds after about 4-5 days. I was told 6 months to regain full strength with the possibility of being back in the water doing light swimming in 4 months. If you want to be aggressive you can do things sooner (Lenny K. won the 100m back at the US Open almost 6 months to the day after having surgery for a torn labrum). But he is a full time swimmer and my guess is he had full access to doctors and physical therapists to help him along. And my research also found a professional baseball player who had SLAP tear surgery and reinjured himself on the very first pitch after his doctors told him it was ok to try pitching again. So it is best to go slowly. Unless anybody has heard of a story where somebody went too slowly and never regained full range of motion? My doctor wants me to wear the sling for a total of 4 weeks and then start physical therapy about 2 weeks after that. In the meantime he has me doing exercises on my own each day at home - mostly just trying to slowly gain back some range of motion. If anybody wants to talk about PT during recovery for SLAP tear surgery please email me at jroddin@pvmasters.org Jeff Roddin

Good luck with your rehab. The big question is what can be done to prevent another tear in the future, which is also relevant to those of us who have not suffered a SLAP injury yet (at least one that's been diagnosed).

I went to a physical therapist today to have my shoulder looked at, and after putting it through various maniupulations, some of which caused pain and restricted movement and some of which didn't, he told me I definitely have impingment and tendinitis/capsulitis, plus there's a chance (though not necessarily a great likelihood) of a SLAP lesion. Questions: 1) SLAP lesions seem to be the new kid on the shoulder block, so to speak. They also seem notoriously difficult to diagnose without going in with a scope and taking a look. Any chance they are being overdiagnosed? 2) It seems that the consensus opinion among surgeons is that these things won't heal on their own. Does anyone know why not? In terms of back problems, it used to be a given than a herniated disk causes pain, and needs to be fixed surgically. Then I recall reading that many, many people have herniated disks that cause no pain--that, in fact, the rate of pain with or without herniation seems about the same. Is it possible that SLAP lesions are the same--i.e., there may be plenty of asymptomatic folks out there with SLAP legions, but only the ones with pain get seen and diagnosed. If any of you out there are orthopods, trainers, or PTs, I would also appreciate any stats on the success of surgical repairs. And one last question: if I do have tendinitis w/o a SLAP tear or any kind of rotator cuff tear, how long does it take for inflamation to quiet down, assuming I don't keep tweaking it? What is a good time length to wait to see if there's any improvement?

This is why I am confused: the shoulder is an incredibly complex joint, with all sorts of mayhem possible; plus the operative theories for pain seems to change. For a while, shrinking the capsule with a heat probe seemed to be the most promising treatment for "instability"--but now that seems to have maybe lost a little of its luster. I once interviewed shoulder guru, Richard Hawkins, of the Steadman-Hawkins Clinic somewhere out in the ski resort territory of Colorado, and he told me he thought that the acromion shaving business didn't make sense. Perhaps there is a doctor on the forum who is up to date on the state of the art thinking here--what has been discredited, what hasn't, what works, what doesn't, and how close to 100 percent sure is anybody about what is really going on? Kyra, I concur: good luck to us all!

By the way, please post any answers here! To all us shoulder wounded types, there's no such thing as hijacking the forum!

I would like to post a positive reply to this forum I started over a year ago. To be honest, it sure doesn't seem like it has been over a year since I posted this forum. I decided last year to not have surgery on my shoulder after havig two doctor tell me I should. I starting taking yoga and pilates as a way to strengthen and stabilize my shoulder. After about a month of continuous exercise I am happy to say I have hardly any pain in my shoulder. I've noticed that if I stop these exercise's the pain starts to come back. I truely feel that my problems have been caused be an inbalance in body strength, posture, and flexibility. I don't think these exercise's will solve everyone's problems, but I am very glad I didn't go under the knife right away. It is worth a good effort to try the options.

I'm sorry to hear about everyone's injuries. Best wishes for a speedy recovery. I do have a question though. I dislocated my shoulder a few months ago and it seemed to be getting better. However a few weeks ago my shoulder kinda started popping and grinding during my recovery on my strokes. I went to the doctor and he said that my AC joint was banging together (apparently because of the ligament) and to take some time off so I did. My shoulder has full range of motion with only a little pain when I pull it from my back up to my shoulders, and when I stress it, usually caused by work. So anyway, after reading everybody's posts my condition sounds somewhat similar with a few slight exceptions. It sounds like the pain is mostly chronic, or there all the time. Is this correct? And my shoulder doesn't pop and catch it seems to pop and grind. Should I go back to the doctor and ask about a possible SLAP lesion or is this simply something completely unrelated? Again, speedy recovery to everyone!! ~Kyra

Slap lesion. I had the same problem back in 1989. Turns out the acromion was banging on something and the shoulder was all irritated from that. I had what is called a "sub-acromial decompression" where they shave the underside of the acromion to make more space for the tendons and ligaments. Do a search on Acromion. Turns out there are a couple of different shapes (all are normal) but can cause problems depending on what you do. Maybe the doctor means with the "AC" joint is the junction between the Acromion and the Collarbone? There is also a ligament called the Coraco-acromial ligament which (I was told) was left over from when we walked on all-fours. I had mine "snipped" in one surgery as it may have been the problem or contributing to the problem. Only problem is--it CAN grow back together.

Originally posted by msgrupp Slap lesion. I had the same problem back in 1989. Turns out the acromion was banging on something and the shoulder was all irritated from that. I had what is called a "sub-acromial decompression" where they shave the underside of the acromion to make more space for the tendons and ligaments. Do a search on Acromion. Turns out there are a couple of different shapes (all are normal) but can cause problems depending on what you do. Maybe the doctor means with the "AC" joint is the junction between the Acromion and the Collarbone? There is also a ligament called the Coraco-acromial ligament which (I was told) was left over from when we walked on all-fours. I had mine "snipped" in one surgery as it may have been the problem or contributing to the problem. Only problem is--it CAN grow back together. Yes, the doctor said that the Acromion and Calival are banging together. I just couldn't remember their names so I figured AC worked, got the general message across. What did you do to help you shoulder pain and heal? If you wouldn't mind talking to me, your problem sounds similar to what the doctor said about my shoulder. Some of the terms are ringing bells in the back of my head. Please e-mail me, I would feel bad for hijacking this thread to talk about my shouder. ~Kyra