J Korean Pain Soc.  1993 May;6(1):40-48.

The Pain Management of Frozen Shoulder

• Cheon IS
• Kim JI
• Ban JS
• Min BW

Abstract

There are many patients who complain of shoulder pain with stiffness. Sadly these patients are often neglected by many physicians. An effective treatment is necessary in clinical practice. In our pain clinic, the fifty patients who were diagnosed frozen shoulder were randomly selected and followed up from Oct. l992 to Mar. 1993. Important factors affecting outcome include; time from onset of pain and stiffness until treatment, initial severity of the pain and stiffness. We found that appropriate treatment led overall to improved patient satisfaction. The results are as follows. For patients treated within 3 weeks of syndrome occurrence, the recovery rate was in excess of 80%. But, if the patients had suffered for more than 6 months prior to treatment, the recovery rate was below 70%. For problems present in excess of six years only slight improvement was observed. These patients were difficult to manage. If the condition of patients was class I, the recovery rate was 94.4%. But in the cases of class III, only 25% of patients were recovered. From our results, we believe that early treatment is the best choice in management of frozen shoulder patients.

Keyword

Frozen shoulder

MeSH Terms

Bursitis*
Humans
Pain Clinics
Pain Management*
Patient Satisfaction
Shoulder Pain