Shoulder surgery recovery is less brutal than people think. Modern arthroscopic techniques and multimodal pain control mean 30% of shoulder replacement patients and 25% of rotator cuff patients need no narcotic painkillers after surgery. Pain is manageable now, even if recovery still takes time.
Common misconception I hear is that shoulder surgery recovery is terrible, and the reality is that modern techniques have made this a lot easier to get through. First off, we have better surgical techniques that make shoulder surgery recovery a lot more manageable, and we know what we're treating in a better manner than we did two decades ago. For instance, arthroscopic management of rotator cuff tears. Secondly, we have multimodal approaches to address all facets of pain. So in my practice, 30% of my patients who have a shoulder replacement don't even take a single narcotic narcotic after surgery, and about 25% of patients who have a rotator cuff repair don't take a single narcotic. And we're continuing to push to try to get that even lower, but the bottom line is that yes, shoulder surgery recovery can take a long time, but it's very manageable from a pain perspective.
