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A 50-Year-Old Female Masters Swimmer with Shoulder Pain

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Mechanics, Pathomechanics and Injury in the Overhead Athlete
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Abstract

Shoulder pain in Masters swimmers can be due to technical or training errors. The swimmer presenting with shoulder pain should undergo a thorough interview and clinical examination. Pain location may point to one of the four common pain syndromes. Clinical examination should include assessment of dysfunctions of the scapula-thoracic joint and the kinetic chain since this may play a major role in etiology and, therefore, in the intervention and subsequent preventive exercise programme. Interpretation of imaging diagnostics should be done with care. Most cases resolve with nonoperative intervention focusing on scapular and kinetic chain dysfunctions. At least four different clinical entities exist that can lead to shoulder pain in swimmers. When nonoperative treatment fails, arthroscopic treatment directed towards the structural pathology should be considered. In most cases a peel back or a SLAP lesion is present, and a biceps tenodesis seems to have a better prognosis for full return to sports than anatomic repair.

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Conflict of Interests

Klaus Bak is a consultant for Arthrex. There are no conflicts of interest related to this chapter.

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Bak, K. (2019). A 50-Year-Old Female Masters Swimmer with Shoulder Pain. In: Kibler, W., Sciascia, A. (eds) Mechanics, Pathomechanics and Injury in the Overhead Athlete. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12775-6_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12775-6_30

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-12774-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-12775-6

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