Dry Needling Therapy to Repair Rotator Cuff Injury

As chiropractors in Reno, we see a lot of shoulder injuries, most commonly rotator cuff injuries. Rotator cuff injuries are caused by a chronic rounding of the shoulders. We see this with people who work on computers all day or do a lot of driving. Anything where you round your shoulders and reach forward for long periods of time can cause tremendous strain on your shoulders and tightness in your pectoral muscles. That tightness is what pulls the shoulders forward and creates that rounding, which eventually evolves into pain and limited mobility in the rotator cuff of the shoulder.

When patients have shoulder pain, they often turn to chiropractic care and muscle work or massage. While these are great solutions, dry needling allows for your doctor to get into the tight muscles mechanically and help them release. It may take several sessions of deep tissue massage to get into those muscles and release tension. And deep tissue massage can be intolerable for some people because it can be a painful process. With dry needling, your doctor typically needs one to two sessions to get deep into the muscle tissue and release the tension at those trigger points.

Dry needling for shoulder pain can be combined with several other chiropractic treatments. Dr. LoConte sees great results for shoulder healing when laser and dry needling are combined. There are also cases where manipulation and at-home exercises or daily stretches can be very effective. For patients whose rotator cuff injury is due to computer work, they find relief in posture assessments and stretching breaks through out the day. Your doctor can walk you through these beneficial exercises you can do on your own a couple times a day to maintain a healthy shoulder structure once treatment is complete.