How Bad is my Shoulder?

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There is really no way for one patient to compare their level of pain to someone elses so, as a surgeon we don’t use or accept the terms ‘high’ or ‘low’ pain threshold.

Your pain is your personal peception of how your symptoms are affecting you.

Now, we can take a subjective measurement of how bad your pain is before I start treatment and do it again when that treatment has been completed. The important interpretation of these values is the difference that we can achieve between the ‘before’ score and the ‘after’ score.

There are a variety of ‘scoring systems’ available to try and measure the outcome of your treatment. I prefer to use the Oxford Shoulder Score because it provides a result based on a mixture of pain and function.

If you want to get an idea of how bad your shoulder is you can fill an your own Oxford Shoulder Score by going to www.orthopaedicscore.com/scorepages/oxford_shoulder_score.html and filling in your responses.
 

So, how does your shoulder compare to my patients?

Below I have shown the average pre-operative and 3 month post-treatment Oxford Shoulder Scores for three conditions. Remember the worst possible score is 60 and an entirley normal shoulder is 12.

Injection for tendonitis/acromio-clavicular joint pain:
pre    33              post  16

Arthroscopic Sub-acromial Decompression +/- ACJ Excision
pre    36              post  15

Frozen Shoulder:
pre    38              post  15

Please remember, it doesn’t matter how low your score is. If it is affecting your life, disturbing your sleep and interfering with your job and sports then it’s high enough to warrant treatment.