Duke Medical Minutes are produced by local sports radio affiliates, and allow Duke specialists to give a brief snapshot into health offerings at Duke.

In this episode, Dean C. Taylor, MD, discusses shoulder dislocation and treatment to prevent reoccurrence of the issue.

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Podcast Transcript

Announcer: We’re talking with Dr. Dean Taylor with the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Duke Sports Medicine.

A lot of our listeners, they’re in recreational ice hockey leagues. I’m sure they’re playing pickup ball with their friends, whether it’s at the Y or a work league. Shoulders are going to bang around, and I’m sure at some point they might pop out.

Taylor: Yeah, Joe, that’s a common injury that we see in contact and collision sports -- the shoulder dislocation. Sometimes it’ll pop right back in, sometimes it’ll stay out, and that’s an emergent problem that needs to be taken care of right away.

Announcer: Now, at that event, maybe you guys know how to pop it back in and, you know, you do your own tough guy -- put it in a sling and you get back out there on the ice or the court, but there are ways to make sure  it doesn’t happen again later on down the line. Just because it pops back in doesn’t mean it’s completely healed.

Taylor: That’s right, especially in the very young patient that’s going to go back to play collision and contact sports. They will have a very high rate of recurrent dislocation, and they’ll have problems with that shoulder for years to come.

One of the things that we’ve discovered is that with arthroscopic surgery we can greatly reduce their chance of having another dislocation, and improve their shoulder function as they try to get back to those sports.