• Up to a third of people worldwide have shoulder pain; it’s one of the most common musculoskeletal complaints. • But medical imaging might not reveal the problem-in fact, it could even cloud it. • In a study published inJAMA Internal Medicinethis week, 99 percent of adults over 40 were found to have at least one abnormality in a rotator cuff on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). • Therotator cuffis the group of muscles and tendons in a shoulder joint that keeps the upper arm bone securely in the shoulder socket-and is often blamed for pain and other symptoms. • The trouble is, the vast majority of people in the study had no shoulder problems. • The finding calls into question the growing use of MRIs to try to diagnose shoulder pain-and, in turn, the growing problem of overtreatment of rotator cuff (RC) abnormalities, which includes partial- and full-thickness tears as well as signs of tendinopathy (tendon swelling and thickening).
Article Summaries:
- Up to a third of people worldwide have shoulder pain; it’s one of the most common musculoskeletal complaints. But medical imaging might not reveal the problem-in fact, it could even cloud it. In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine this week, 99 percent of adults over 40 were found to have at least one abnormality in a rotator cuff on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The rotator cuff is the group of muscles and tendons in a shoulder joint that keeps the upper arm bone securely in the shoulder socket-and is often blamed for pain and other symptoms. The trouble is, the vast majority of p
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