Shoulder surgery is common among baseball players.  It is even more common among pitchers.  The most common symptoms for the shoulder that a pitcher has when throwing is pain and a decrease in velocity.  Sometimes a pitcher feels that his shoulder is loose or coming out of the socket, but most of the time it is just pain.  This pain is caused by inflamed rotator cuff tendons.  This pain and inflammation can be caused by too much stress or by labrum tears.  Hopefully it is because of too much stress.  This is less serious than the labrum tears.  Inflammation and pain can cause stress by trying to get in shape too fast or just throwing too much.  This can be fixed by cutting back on throwing, icing your arm, and anti-inflammatory pills.  Rehab exercises are also good.  Patience is the key when coming off an overuse injury.  Coming back too soon may put you back on recovery time.  Be patient and make sure you are 100% before you get back out there to throw.  This may be the hardest thing about a shoulder injury being that we are all competitors and want to get back out there as soon as possible.  When the shoulder joint feels loose that means the ligaments have become stretched.  The arm being able to slide around the joint like that will put more stress on the tendons.  This is where the pain comes from in this case.  This is also known as shoulder instability.  The last reason for shoulder pain can be due to labrum tears.  The labrum's job is to stabilize the shoulder.  It is a cartilage that goes around the socket.  If there are tears in the labrum the shoulder may experience symptoms of pain and looseness.  It is hard to make the diagnosis because all of the injuries have the same feelings of pain and inflammation.  Most of the time even labrum tears are treated as other shoulder injuries as far as rehab is concerned.  It is not until everything else doesn't work does the doctor usually resort to surgery.  It is recommended that you try everything to rehabilitate your shoulder prior to having surgery.  There may be something that works and you won't need the surgery.  Cortisone shots may be a good way to work through the pain however these are very contraversial.  They may weaken you even more than you already are because you can't feel it, or they may dicipate the pain and allow you to work through it and actually get stronger.  Either way it is something that a pitcher will have to decide by talking with their trainers and doctors.  Surgeries for the shoulder can take nine to twelve months for a pitcher to recover fully.  Whether it was an operation to tighten the shoulder or to fix a torn labrum, the operations are not taken lightly because the recovery time is long.  The first thing that will be done prior to shoulder surgery in as arthroscope.  This allows the surgeon to evaluate the labrum and the rest of the structures inside of the shoulder.  From here the surgeon can identify what needs to be done.

Rehab For Shoulder Surgery