Preventing frozen shoulder

Preventing frozen shoulder The day after patients recover from surgery and anesthesia and are able to sit up, they can start doing daily normal activities such as brushing teeth, combing hair, using a spoon to pick up food and putting food into their mouth, and unbuttoning their shirts. Five to seven days after that, the patients should try to start with slow exercises and then do hard exercises and increase frequency until they can move their shoulder as normal before the surgery. After going back home, the patients should do exercises regularly. Otherwise, the frozen shoulder will recur in the same shoulder although it has been fixed.

Swollen arms occur when lymphatic vessels in armpits are damaged by surgery or radiation. This obstructs or limits the lymph from the arm to travel back to the heart. As a result, the lumps remain in the arm, which causes it to gradually swollen. In some cases, the swollen arm can turn ugly, and sometimes it can be painful and infected. If the swelling gets worse, there is no way to treat it. However, the swelling can be treated by limiting the movement of the arm, raising the arm higher and getting it massaged.   

The best way to treat the symptoms of the swollen arm is to prevent the arm from getting swollen. Patients with the swollen arm have to lie down in an appropriate position while recovering in the recovery ward. The patients are advised to raise the arm to a 90-degree angle from their body. The elbow of the arm should be supported probably by a pillow at heart level or slightly above the level of the heart. And then, bend the forearm that is perpendicular to the upper arm with their index finger pointing to either their head or to the direction where their toes are as the patients can do. Their hand and forearm on the side of the swollen arm must be supported to be a little higher than the level of the position of the elbow from the same side. With this position, the accumulated lumps will travel back to the heart more conveniently.