Rotator Cuff & Shoulder Treatments. Use your own body cells.

The rotator cuff is one of the most common places to injure your shoulder. Because we’re always moving our arm up, driving, throwing a baseball, shooting a hoop, stretching, swimming, this joint is moving all day long.

All these muscles are used for any activity we’re doing also moves the shoulder joint, right? You need flexibility and the ability to move these muscles. So for example, the supraspinatus muscle lifts up your arm. Your infraspinatus and your teres muscles rotate your arm externally. And then you have even the one that’s underneath your scapula, called your subscapularis, that allows you to rotate the joint inward. All these movements that we can do with our shoulders are done by these main muscle groups. Even sleeping at night, your muscles are supporting your shoulder joint. That’s why people with shoulder pain have significantly poorer sleep quality!¹

So obviously, from time to time, from overuse or injury, we can tear these muscles, which can become problematic. When even small tears in your shoulder can cause daily pain and make it difficult to sleep; you need it to heal. Instead of going into the doctor and having surgery, which can cause damage with another tear, the idea is to regenerate these muscles and restore your function. So at Phoenix Men’s Health Center, we use regenerative medicine to get you great results, safely and quickly. Whether you need prolotherapy, PRP, amnio, stem cell, or another treatment option, we’re going to use the best one for you and figure out how we’re going to get you better so you can avoid surgery.

Shoulder surgery for your rotator cuff calls for at least 12 weeks recovery.² And PT to regain function after the initial recovery. You don’t want to go down the surgical route because prolotherapy can get you feeling better within six weeks. Let’s say you have more of a problem with your shoulders. We have other treatment options like PRP therapy. We inject a PRP, which already has growth factors in there. We draw your blood. We process it and get all the growth factors from your body. Then we inject your own growth factors directly where your problem is. Studies have shown patients have significant improvement in shoulder pain, function, and range of motion with PRP injections.³ Now, it’s going to be sore for about a week, but then afterward, you’re going to get healing for up to three months with PRP. If you get surgery done, it’s going to hurt right now, and it’s going to suck one month later, and it’s going to suck three months later. Your goal is to get back to the activities you love and avoid the activities that caused the issue, so you don’t have to worry about it ever again.

Potentially, with regenerative medicine, you don’t have to have repeated treatments throughout your life, which we can’t say the same for surgery or cortisone injections. Our job is to figure out which treatment you need. We can go in and treat your shoulder pain with PRP, prolotherapy, whatever regenerative medicine makes sense for our patient. Even though your shoulder joint is complex, the choice to use natural shoulder repair doesn’t have to be a complex decision. Talk to us about which option will work best for your shoulder pain, so you can get back to the activities that you love quickly without any surgical complications or extended recovery times.

**This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult with a healthcare professional before starting any treatment. Individual results may vary based on health conditions and other factors.

1. Mulligan, Edward P., et al. “Sleep Quality and Nocturnal Pain in Patients with Shoulder Disorders.” Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery, vol. 24, no. 9, 2015, pp. 1452–1457., doi:10.1016/j.jse.2015.02.013.
2. Sgroi, T. A., & Cilenti, M. (2018). Rotator cuff repair: post-operative rehabilitation concepts. Current reviews in musculoskeletal medicine, 11(1), 86–91. doi:10.1007/s12178-018-9462-7
3. Zafarani, Z., Mirzaee, F., Guity, M., & Aslani, H. (2017). Clinical Results of Platelet-Rich Plasma for Partial Thickness Rotator Cuff Tears: A Case Series. The archives of bone and joint surgery, 5(5), 328–331.