The shoulder is considered the most mobile joint in the human body and as a result more vulnerable to injuries caused by overuse, bad postures or bad movements.
Shoulder Impingement syndrome has become one of the most frequent disorders of the musculoskeletal system; largely due to the high productivity rates that companies must maintain, which generates an increase in repetitive movements at the level of superior members in their workers.
Shoulder Impingement is an irritation caused by mechanical friction of the rotator handle (consisting of the muscles: the supraspinatus, the subscapular, the infraspinatus and the minor round and the long portion of the biceps) caused by the arch components subacromial among those found: acromion, acromioclavicular joint and coracoid process.
It is caused by multiple factors, with external factors such as tendon overload and repeated microtrauma being able to participate, as well as intrinsic or internal factors such as poor vascularity or blood supply on the cuff of the rotator muscles as a whole and biomechanical or structural alterations that can come from birth.
Patients with impingement or subacromial syndrome often have shoulder pain of very variable intensity, weakness, and possible paresthesias or a feeling of numbness or tingling in the upper arm region. In these patients, the clinician will usually rule out other causes of symptoms such as pathologies or alterations of the cervical spine with physical examination and some studies.
When your clinician suspects a subacromial syndrome, they will be interested in differentiating the primary sub-acromial syndrome (it is the result of an abnormal mechanical relationship between the rotator cuff and the coracoacromial arch), from the secondary subacromial syndrome (often the result of a glenohumeral joint instability or thoracic scapulo in patients with underlying glenohumeral instability). For the treatment to be successful it is essential to correctly identify the cause of the disorder.