Dr. Patrick Denard recommends keeping your arm in a sling for four weeks after shoulder replacement surgery. A study from his practice found that patients who waited four weeks before moving had better soft-tissue healing, especially of the subscapularis tendon, and caught up to early movers by three months.
Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Denard. I'm a shoulder specialist at Southern Oregon Orthopedics, and today I'm talking about what is the best rehab after shoulder replacement surgery. A shoulder replacement surgery can be a major improvement in quality of life, both in terms of pain relief and range of motion, but it's important that the rehab is optimized after that procedure so that somebody can get the best outcome as possible. So in my practice, what I do is I have my patients be in a sling for 4 weeks after the surgery. During that time, they can go arm up and down, and then at 4 weeks they come out of the sling and start range of motion, and then start strengthening at 8 weeks and progress up from there. Now why is that? Some people actually have their patients move right away. Well, we did a study a few years ago, and what we did in that study is we compared people who moved right away to those who were in a sling for 4 weeks. And it turned out that the patients that stayed in the sling for 4 weeks had a higher healing rate. So even though the shoulder's replaced, you get rid of the arthritis, there's still soft tissue healing that needs to occur, particularly in the area of the subscapularis where you enter into the joint to get exposure and do the replacement. So one of the interesting things beyond healing in that study was we found that by 3 months there was no difference. So the people who moved early had a little bit quicker recovery, but they didn't do as well as the patients who sit tight for 4 weeks, who ultimately had a higher healing rate and did better. So again, I think after shoulder replacement, ideally in most cases, 4 weeks in a sling is the best rehab based on the published data. For more information, check out our website. I'm happy to answer questions at any time. Thank you.
