Shoulder Arthroscopy Capsulolabral repair. Not regaining ROM

[MariaBer]

Sorry for my english in advance.
I am 24 years old and I had capsulolabral surgery 5 months ago. Except for the instability I had a pretty strong shoulder and the prognosis was very good. However, Didn't start physiotherapy until week 8, and didnt mobilise muy shoulder un external rotation until week 12. Public healthcare, I trusted they knew what they were doing, now I know I probably made one of the biggest mistakes of my entire life.
I am at 135 degrees of passive frontal elevation, 15 of external rotation, and 45 of internal rotation.
In the last months I have noticed no matter what I was not regaining movility. 2 times a week of physiotherapy and working very hard and constantly at home. I have regained 10 degrees of frontal elevation and 5 degrees of external rotation in the last two months.
The physios keep telling me I have to give It time, patience, but I dont trust them anymore. I think that if I continue at this rate im never going to regain at least a normal ROM, im not swimming anymore.
I dont know what to do anymore. I am starting to become depressed. Have an appointment with my trauma in one month.
If anyone had a similar experience I would like to know how it turned out for you. Or if you know anything about it, what can or should I do from now on, I would really apreciate It.
Thank you.

 

[Jaycey]

@MariaBer Welcome to BoneSmart! Your English is just fine. I hope we can reassure you about your shoulder.

The physios keep telling me I have to give It time, patience

I have to agree with your physios. Healing from this type of surgery does take time and patience. I'm going to tag one of my colleague who had similar surgery. She might have some input for you. @SaraK .

 

[MariaBer]

Thank you so much...

 

[SaraK]

@MariaBer - welcome to BoneSmart!

As I understand it, you had to have a ligament reattached to the shoulder. I had a rotator cuff repair which is also a soft tissue repair but a bit different. My son did have to have a ligament in this wrist reattached, though.

As with your surgery, I was required to immobilize the shoulder for 6 weeks. My PT started then, but another 2 weeks isn't unreasonable. With our surgeries, a lot of healing needed to happen before we could start stretching things. All that inactivity does cause everything to tighten up.

Give it time and listen to the physio. Everyone heals at their own rate. My mobility continued to improve beyond the first year. My physio took things in stages and external rotation was not one of the first movements we worked on. He said he used a particular order of movements because some were more difficult and needed more closeness in other areas so they built on each other.

My son was told it would take 2 years to fully heal from his surgery. He's a golfer and it did take about that long before he was comfortable playing.

It's hard to be patient (I'm definitely not a patient person). But keep with it. If you don't have one at home, ask your physio about using a shoulder pulley. It helped me keep the shoulder looser, stretch passive range of motion and eventually helped with active range of motion.

Your English is great (its much better than my Spanish which is limited to a few words) but please let me know if you don't understand any of my response and I'll try to put it into different words.

 

[MariaBer]

Thank you so much Sara.
Your words give hope again.
I will definitely try the shoulder pulley.
Thank you.

 

[djklaugh]

@MariaBer Check with your physio people about the shoulder pulley they may be able to give you one. My folks did give me one when I had my shoulders replaced. And that was one of the last exercise segments of the rehab process for me. Rehabbing shoulders is a rather long process and really should be done slowly especially for repair of soft tissue problems. Also even after finishing with formal physical therapy both my shoulders continued to gain range of motion and strength over time.

 

[MariaBer]

Thank you

For how long would you day you kept gaining range of motion? Or when did you regain It completely?

 

[SaraK]

My trainer and I were talking about this last night. I'm coming up on my 2 year anniversary so it was on my mind. It's a gradual thing and I was lucky to recover quickly. It still took several months to get enough range of motion to put a barbell on my shoulders. By about a year my range of motion was close to pre-surgery. It still was more likely to tighten up. It's only recently that I've been able to cut back to normal stretching before a workout instead of extra stretches for the shoulder.

Nothing happens quickly with this. You won't be able to point to THAT day or THAT week like you might with other injuries. It will just gradually improve.

 

[djklaugh]

@MariaBer My right shoulder replacement is now 9 years old and the left is almost 5 years old. The right has pretty much full range of motion and the left nearly so. My right is my dominant side so I use that arm more than the left. The only things I have found that I just can not do with new shoulders is hook a bra behind my back ( for me it seems the TSRs shortened my arms a wee bit) and do the crawl stroke when swimming. But those might just be "me" problems and they are minor concerns. I would guess that I continued to gain ROM for about 2 years after ending formal PT.