The Shoulder

Lesions of the shoulder girdle seldom provoke pain down the arm. As a rule, the pain remains in the neck, the scapular or the claviculo-pectoral area.
Only in lesions of the brachial plexus the symptoms (paraesthesia and/or numbness)spread to the lower arm.
Suspicion of a lesion of the shoulder girdle is usually aroused during the preliminary examination of the shoulder. For example, the examiner finds, besides the limitation of active and passive elevation of the arm, also a disturbance (pain and/or limitation) during the active elevation of the shoulder girdle.
This must alert and stimulate him to perform a thorough examination of the shoulder girdle .
Functional examination is extremely simple. It exists of three active, three passive and four resisted movements.
The combination of positive and negative answers once again gives a particular pattern that points in the direction of a pathology or a group of pathologies.