What is frozen shoulder?
Doctor's first recognised frozen shoulder in the late 1800's when they realised that it was a different condition from arthritis of the shoulder. Let me repeat this for emphasis:Frozen shoulder is not a form of arthritis and it does not develop into arthritis.
Frozen shoulder can cause severe shoulder pain. Sufferer's are frustrated by the stiffness in the joint but it is pain relief that they seek.
I have treated many thousands of patients with frozen shoulder and, almost without exception, they tell me that they can live with the stiffness - if only the shoulder pain would go away.
One of the earliest experts to devote attention to frozen shoulder was an American orthopedic expert called Codman. When he wrote a large textbook on shoulder pain in the 1930's he only devoted a few pages to the subject of frozen shoulder, saying that frozen shoulder was common, but little was known about the cause or the problem inside the joint.
Things have changed a lot in medicine since 1930 but doctor's still don't have a clear answer to the question of what triggers the process that leads to a frozen shoulder.
About twenty years after Codman first wrote his textbook, another doctor called Nevasier tried to perform surgical operations on the shoulders of patients who were suffering from frozen shoulder. During his attempts he found that the capsule around the joint was stuck to the bone surface. He had to peel it away like a bandaid or elastoplast strip. Because of this he coined the name Adhesive Capsulitis. The terms frozen shoulder and adhesive capsulitis have been used interchangeably ever since.
Inflammation anywhere in the body causes stickiness.
The cells that control the inflammation process read more
