Your shoulder joint has many components, and injuries to any one of these components can cause a lot of pain, stiffness, and loss of movement in your shoulder. Rotator cuff tears are among the more common types of shoulder injuries. The good news is, today’s treatment options can help you recover quickly.
As a top-ranked orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist in Sugar Land and Houston, Texas, J. Michael Bennett, MD, offers noninvasive and surgical treatments for torn rotator cuffs. Here’s how he can help you restore healthy, pain-free shoulder movement.
Your shoulder rotator cuff is composed of multiple muscles and tendons, all working together to stabilize your shoulder joint and support normal movement. A rotator cuff tear typically involves damage to one or more of these tendons. About 2 million Americans injure their rotator cuff every year.
Some tears happen when you fall on your outstretched arm or if you abruptly lift a heavy object and put a lot of excess strain on the shoulder. But many tears occur slowly over time as a result of wear and tear.
Rotator cuff tears typically cause symptoms like:
A partial rotator cuff tear damages the tendon but doesn’t completely sever it. A full-thickness tear happens when the tendon detaches entirely from the bone.
Dr. Bennett offers several options for rotator cuff repair, ranging from noninvasive physical therapy and medication injections to surgery aimed at restoring a badly damaged tendon. He offers an innovative treatment option for patients with partial-thickness tears using a bioinductive implant called Regeneten®.
Regeneten is a postage-stamp-sized wafer-thin implant composed of purified bovine tendon. Once implanted, Regeneten promotes natural healing processes to help the tear “mend” on its own. Over the following few months, the implant fuses with your natural tendon tissue to strengthen the joint and help prevent future damage.
The Regeneten implant is implanted in a minimally invasive surgical procedure using tiny incisions. Patients who have the implant can expect faster recovery and a shorter rehabilitation period to get their shoulder moving normally again.
Rotator cuff tears may be pretty common, but that doesn’t mean you have to learn to live with painful symptoms. Ignoring a rotator cuff tear can quickly result in a much worse injury that requires more complex treatment to fix it.
If you’re having shoulder pain, call or book an appointment online and let Dr. Bennett design a treatment plan to get you on the road to recovery.
