In our life, we often hear that people around us are diagnosed with “frozen shoulder” because of shoulder pain, but are there really that many people suffering from “frozen shoulder”? For a long time, there is a general lack of professional teams for shoulder joint diseases in China, and people have little understanding of the causes and pathological mechanisms of “shoulder pain”, resulting in the diagnosis of “frozen shoulder” for “shoulder pain”. This makes “frozen shoulder” a scapegoat for many other causes of shoulder pain. In particular, rotator cuff injuries, which are common in middle-aged and elderly people, are often misdiagnosed as “frozen shoulder”, and many patients lose the best opportunity for early diagnosis and treatment, resulting in long-term pain or limited movement of the shoulder joint. Recently, there has been a new awareness of recurrent shoulder pain in young people, and there are more and more cases of rotator cuff injury due to shoulder impingement. For this reason, sports medicine physicians are reminding the general public: don’t treat shoulder pain as frozen shoulder! The rotator cuff injury should not be treated as frozen shoulder. Just over 50 years old, Lao Chen is a cadre of Jiujiang authorities, likes sports, usually mainly doing paperwork. In the past two years, he had recurring pain in his right shoulder joint, which he thought was caused by work strain and excessive exercise, and went to a number of large hospitals, where a film showed “large nodular cystic changes and osteosclerosis of the shoulder joint”. After rest, massage, physiotherapy and medication, the effect was not good, and the symptoms could not be relieved. He was finally diagnosed with “shoulder impingement and rotator cuff injury” in our department, and after the corresponding professional treatment, his symptoms were well controlled and he recovered completely in two months, and now he has been following up for half a year without recurrence, and his quality of life has been greatly improved. Xiao Zhao, a badminton enthusiast in his early 20s, started to have pain in his right shoulder joint during exercise when he was in college, and was often troubled by pain in his shoulder joint during exercise for three years. He has been treated with rheumatism and other physiotherapy and baking lamp, but his symptoms are sometimes good and sometimes bad. Recently, during a badminton match, the pain in the shoulder joint was unbearable and he could not finish the match. He went to our sports medicine department and found that the right shoulder peak was larger leading to impact during sports, which caused rotator cuff damage and already had a large tear, requiring a more complicated arthroscopic repair surgery. Currently Xiao Zhao is 12 months post-surgery and is the runner-up in the unit’s youth festival badminton tournament. Rotator cuff injury is the most common cause of shoulder pain, says a sports medicine doctor. Many people and even general orthopedic surgeons often mistake shoulder pain for frozen shoulder, which is a misconception. In fact, the most common cause of shoulder pain is rotator cuff injury, which accounts for more than 40-60% of all shoulder pain patients. Frozen shoulder is a widespread aseptic inflammation caused by damage to the soft tissues around the shoulder joint, and is related to shoulder immobility and stiffness. The painful area can feel “comfortable” (Palm Sign); the movement of the shoulder joint and arm is limited in all directions. In contrast, rotator cuff injury is an acute and chronic lesion of the shoulder musculature, especially the supraspinatus muscle, caused by a bone spur, degeneration or trauma to the shoulder joint, which is characterized by weakness, a limited pain area, a painful spot (Finger Sign) with the finger, and a basically normal range of motion of the shoulder. The clinical incidence of true frozen shoulder is not high, accounting for only 10%-15% of shoulder pain. Clinically, frozen shoulder is a self-limiting disease, and usually does not recur after healing. If a patient has recurrent shoulder pain, the range of motion of the shoulder joint is not significantly reduced, or the range of motion of the affected arm is slightly smaller than that of the normal arm, but in addition to pain, the more obvious symptom is weakness in lifting: no matter how hard one tries, one’s arm cannot be lifted more than 60°-90° in this range, but with the help of a good hand, one can lift it over the head. Once these symptoms occur, a rotator cuff injury should be highly suspected. The rotator cuff is the four muscles that surround the shoulder joint and play an important role in the normal physiological activities of the shoulder joint. When the rotator cuff is injured or degenerates due to trauma or bone spur growth, the tendons may become edematous and inflammatory, or even rupture, resulting in pain, weakness and limited movement of the shoulder joint. These conditions are collectively referred to as rotator cuff injuries. The main clinical manifestations are: recurrent or persistent shoulder pain; inability to sleep on the affected side; loss of muscle strength, especially when trying to lift the upper arm; and joint mobility that is mostly unrestricted, but may be limited. Its treatment requires a clear diagnosis by a sports medicine professional. Without timely treatment, the lesion can progress further, leading to a more severe tear of the rotator cuff and affecting the function of the joint. Many people believe that rotator cuff injuries must be caused by trauma, and sports medicine physicians have corrected this incorrect view to us. Rotator cuff injuries can be caused either by acute trauma or by repetitive strain. The former mainly occurs in young people who land on their shoulders during sports, causing rotator cuff injuries, which account for a large proportion of young patients. Of course, many young patients with rotator cuff injuries can also be caused by congenital abnormalities in the shape of the rotator cuff, which can have no history of trauma; whereas middle-aged and elderly people often suffer from degenerative changes in the rotator cuff and brittle texture, which usually have no obvious history of trauma and generally occur in the dominant shoulder, while frozen shoulder often occurs in the non-dominant shoulder In general, early treatment of rotator cuff injuries can be treated with shock waves and ultrashort waves, which are more effective; workers with repeated pain and weakness affecting their lives should undergo arthroscopic minimally invasive treatment as early as possible with excellent results. In the case of large rotator cuff tears (>5cm), arthroscopic treatment is more complicated and even requires incisional surgery. It is also important to remind the public that repeated shoulder dislocations can also lead to large rotator cuff tears, and minimally invasive treatment for repeated shoulder dislocations is now well established. With the development of national fitness sports, there will be more and more patients with rotator cuff injury caused by sports trauma and repeated strain, and many doctors in the industry, including orthopedic surgeons, have not yet fully understood this disease and often treat it as “frozen shoulder”, so its diagnosis and treatment cannot be ignored. For this reason, the Department of Orthopedics of the First People’s Hospital of Jiujiang City has set up a special outpatient clinic and is waiting for the public every Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning to solve their problems. We also hope that you will pay attention to rotator cuff injury at an early stage and seek medical attention in time once you have recurrent shoulder pain so as not to delay the treatment and cause irreversible limb dysfunction.