"How did I tear my rotator cuff?"

Mr. Jones is my typical patient with a rotator cuff tear. A sixty five your old gentlemen who has been having shoulder pain for the past month. He exercises occasionally and plays golf frequently. He has not had any recent injuries. His primary care physician obtained an MRI of his shoulder, which showed a rather large tear of his rotator cuff. Perplexed he asked me, “How could I have torn my rotator cuff? I’m not a baseball player. I didn’t do anything to me shoulder”

The normal rotator cuff muscles provide strength and stability to the shoulder.

The rotator cuff wears out with time leading to
a tear

This is a common situation, but easily explained. The rotator cuff naturally “wears out” with time. For most of us a rotator cuff tear simply results from normal aging. A good analogy is a pair of jeans. If worn long enough your jeans will wear and fray, and might even tear. The same is true of the rotator cuff muscles of our shoulder. A study published in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery (see graph below) showed that 20% of all people sixty years old have a rotator cuff tear even though most people don’t have any symptoms. At the age of eighty half of all people will have rotator cuff tears! On the other hand, it is relatively rare for a patient under forty to have a tear. So the truth is that rotator cuff tears are generally not athletes’ injuries. They are just part of life.

The percentage of people who have rotator cuff tears naturally increases with age. By the age of eight half of us will have a rotator cuff tear.

The good news is that most rotator cuff tears can be successfully treated without surgery. Research studies have shown that up to 75% of rotator cuff tears can be effectively treated with physical therapy and cortisone injections.