It's funny that this should come up now because I spent much of yesterday checking out a shoulder rehab product that I'm thinking of promoting. I bought it a couple of years ago when I buggered my shoulder up.
The author is a very good American physiotherapist (or physical therapist as they call themselves over there).
He says that injections can vary in effectiveness from very little improvement to being a big help. Sometimes they give you enough relief that you can carry out rehab exercises which would otherwise be too painful. He also says that you should have a maxiumum of 3 because the cortisone can start to degrade the tissues it is injected into.
His view is that surgery should only be considered after severe trauma or once rehab has been given a good length of time to take effect but isn't improving matters and if the current condition of the shoulder isn't acceptable to you.
Multiple surgeries rapidly reduce in effectiveness because of the build-up of scar tissue so if you are going to have surgery, you really want it to be effective first time.
He also quoted the stats for keyhole surgery and open surgery. The results were very much better for the keyhole surgery but the surgeon has to be much more skilled to perform it properly.
It's well worth a read. There's a 105 minute MP3 file to accompany a powerpoint demonstration which explains the anatomy of the shoulder and what goes wrong it. Actually, having watched/listened to that I'm amazed at how well shoulders normally work and that they don't go wrong more often!
A complete illustrated rehab program is provided, together with some video files showing the exercises being performed.
If you are interested, you can buy it through this web page ->
http://www.rotatorcufftraining.com/
(Don't worry folks - that isn't my affiliate link, it is direct to the author's sales page and I won't make a penny from it. Don't let his sales pitch put you off, he knows his stuff. The cost would be about £26 + VAT)
Oh, and I should add that my brother-in-law has had several cortisone injections in a painful shoulder over the past few years. It gives him temporary relief but then he ends up aggravating the injury again.
It makes perfect sense to me to give your shoulder the best chance of recovery by doing a graduated programme of rehab exercises.
And the bad news is that no matter what you have done, your shoulder will probably never be quite as good as it was before the injury. Hopefully it will be good enough.
In my case, it was so bad that I couldn't even lift my arm over my guitar. 2.5 years later it aches a bit and it isn't as strong as it was, but I can put up with the level of discomfort that I now have.
My bro-in-law had one recently...pretty painful.
