Current Exercise Approaches in Shoulder Pathologies

Abstract

The shoulder joint is a very mobile and dynamc joint between the arm and the body.The three-dimensonal movement of the joint allows access to every part of the body. The shoulder joint s a complex consisting of the glenohumoral, acromoclavicular, sternoclavicular and scapulothoracic joints. The shoulder joint functionally allows extension, flexion, abduction, internal and external rotation, protraction, retraction, horizontal abduction and adduction movements. The formation of these movements is generally linked to the harmony of gleinohumeral joint movements and scapula movements. There are many diseases that affect the shoulder joint and muscles. While some of these diseases directly affect the shoulder joint, some cause damage to the surrounding soft and muscle tissues. This damage causes an increase in pain level, difficulty in daily living activities, and a decrease in quality of life.Therefore, the rehabilitation of shoulder disorders is quite important. The main goal of rehabilitation in the shoulder joint has always been to relieve pain. In addition, eliminating the problems that cause pain is also important for pain control. However, in order to irrreversibly treat the pathologies occurring in the shoulder joint, rehabilitation approaches aimed at strengthening the shoulder muscles and regulating the neuromuscular pathways are also needed. For this reason, many dif-ferent rehabilitation approaches have been created for many different reasons in the rehabilitation of shoulder pathologies. In the contemporary literatüre, range of movement exercise, codman pendulum exercise, closed kinetic chain exercises, virtual-reality based exercises and muscle energy techniques are preferred frequently. These exercises have been shown to have mostly effective results in reducing pain, increasing functionality, and improving quality of life. As a result, the effectiveness of different exercise methods in the rehabilitation of shoulder pathologies was demonstrated. This chapter has detailed these exercise approaches and aims to present them to readers as a basis. In this way, it was tried to show which exercise approaches have a place in the current literature for orthopedic shoulder problems of health professionals reading this section.