Ms. Li, a 46-year-old housewife, suffered a shoulder dislocation 5 years ago due to a traumatic injury to the shoulder joint, which was later successfully reset after treatment at a local hospital. She thought the injury was over, but she didn’t know that it was the beginning of her long road to medical treatment! After that trauma, Ms. Li experienced pain and soreness in her shoulder joint from time to time, and at first, she thought it was muscle soreness after the trauma and did not pay much attention to it. However, what she didn’t expect was that the pain and swelling kept recurring and persisting, so she went to the health center for a checkup and was given some analgesics and blood-boosting medication. Since then, over the past five years, Ms. Li’s sore shoulder joints have gradually worsened, and she has experienced pain at night, which has caused her to be unable to sleep peacefully and to rest enough at night to work during the day. As a result, she retired home sick to rest. During this time, her family and neighbors, as well as many doctors in the hospital, told her that it was “frozen shoulder” and that she would be fine if she went home to exercise, pull the hoop and “paddle” her hands, and that her family’s persuasion and the advice of many doctors made her feel that the pain was caused by her lack of exercise. The pain in the shoulder joint. After taking countless medicines, taking countless injections, and trying acupuncture and fire cupping recommended by many Chinese medicine practitioners, the pain in her shoulder joint did not improve at all, but became more severe. By chance, she came to the clinic after reading an interview with the director of the shoulder joint center, Ding Shaohua. After careful examination, Director Ding suggested her to have 2 tests: special X-ray and 3.0T MRI, the results of which suggested: “glenoid labral injury”. Ms. Li was puzzled. What is glenoid labral injury? She had never heard of it? The so-called “glenoid lip” is very similar to the rubber gasket of our daily life pressure cooker, once broken, then it is a leak, naturally there is no way to maintain the normal pressure, thus causing the pain caused by the jam in the joint cavity. Finally, Ms. Li’s condition was found, and with the help of Director Ding, she was given a minimally invasive shoulder arthroscopy, which easily solved her problem by seeing her glenoid labral damage on the TV screen and repairing it with just three small 5 mm incisions. Ms. Li went home on the 2nd day after the surgery and exclaimed: Finally, she could sleep peacefully! Shoulder arthroscopy is a highly sophisticated and minimally invasive technique that allows careful observation of the intra-articular situation and accurate detection of lesion sites, and is suitable for observation, examination, diagnosis and treatment of intra-articular diseases. The white arrow in the photo on the left shows the ruptured labrum, which is what we call a rubber band, while the photo on the right shows a normal labrum. Because the rubber band was stuck inside the joint cavity, between the bone and the bone, when Ms. Li moved her shoulder joint, the labrum kept wearing away the cartilage until these “subchondral bone” pointed out by the arrow on the left appeared. The “subchondral bone”, as indicated by the arrow on the left, is pitted like the surface of the moon. In the picture on the right, the cartilage is normal. Unfortunately, in the future, Ms. Li will inevitably develop osteoarthritis. Here is a photo of the glenoid labrum after we finished repairing it. You can see that the labrum (rubber band) is fixed to the bone and won’t trigger pain after it gets stuck in again! For this patient, we are rather sorry that we are still not doing enough outreach. If Ms. Lee had come in earlier, perhaps the cartilage would not have been worn out and the outcome would have been much better! We are committed to relieving your shoulder pain! If you have any questions about your shoulder joint, ask us and we will do our best to help you!