Rotator Cuff Injury: Episode 18

• Rotator Cuff Injury is common and becomes more likely as we age. The good news is most are non-surgical.
• In honor of Thanksgiving we are reviewing Trader Joe’s Turkey Stuffing and Seasoned Kettle Chips
• Trivia question of the week: What is the only sea without any coasts?
• Follow us on Instagram: 2pts_n_a_bagofchips and/or Twitter @2PTsNaBagOChips to see photos, video and get additional information related to Rotator Cuff injury throughout the week.
• Thanks for listening!!

We are going over rotator cuff injury and we are also going to be reviewing Trader Joe’s Turkey Stuffing and Seasoned Kettle Chips. All the flavors of Thanksgiving in each potato chip, I gotta’ tell ya’ they tried cause it looks like a feast. It does you can smell it from here, we have the bag open already. If I had smellification I would be able to smell it.

 

Smellification, that would be a cool tool. I’ve been low on the smellification lately. Smellification that is like the Richie Rich thing, you ever see that with Macaulay Culkin, back in the day. Sure haven’t. Well the smellinator 5000 saved them, because it smelled TNT which they then threw out the window. So the parents didn’t die. Gotcha. He was the dude from Home Alone. Yes. Yeah. Anyway we digress. I was going to say the same thing, we digress. Weeeird. That is so weird, isn’t that weird.

 

So rotator cuff incidence, fairly high, 17% of the population has a full thickness tear. The good news. It’s kinda like the disks, the slipped disk. Your disks can’t slip, but that is a whole other story. You can have a rotator cuff tear, and it’s completely asymptomatic. And this grossly affects the population as it ages. So individuals over 60 years of age make up 30%. 30% of 60 year olds or older have a rotator cuff tear, under 60 only about 6%. Ok. If I said that correctly. Yeah, that sounds about right.

 

This is defiantly something that we see more in the aging population. Some of that may have to do with the fact that there could be some postural incidences. As we tend to slouch a little more and we have a type I or II acromion that creates impingement and that can dig into the rotator cuff and just gradually fray away at it. Which will eventually lead to a partial thickness tear and then full thickness tear.

That acromion type is basically a little hook or a slightly bigger hook so it almost acts to kind of carve into it. It’s almost like a nail carving into a rope. Eventually, with that kind of friction over time it’s going to tear. It will.