Pre-operative tips for shoulder joint replacements

Consider whether your surgery will be impacting your dominant side or not

• If so, consider doing some general upper body strengthening and even more so, some fine motor tasks with the non-dominant side to be prepared for recovery as you will have very limited ability to use your surgical side to help facilitate optimal healing (will be in a sling)
• If you have specific questions/concerns about this, consider having a pre-operative referral to PT to discuss and trial a couple of exercises prior to surgery

Do NOT use your surgical side actively until told to do so by the orthopedic surgeon and/or physical therapist

• Need to allow for healing/setting of the joint replacement components
• Could cause excessive stress on soft tissues that are responding to the surgical procedure

Wear sling as prescribed by orthopedic surgeon and/or physical therapist

• Works as a reminder to avoid actively using your arm
• Serves in the community setting to help inform the public to give you more space to avoid potentially “bumping” into you

Be sure to have pain managed adequately in early phases of recovery

• As you will not be able to actively use your surgical side, it is important to have your pain managed well enough to tolerate physical therapy sessions in which the therapist moves your arm for you to avoid developing excessive stiffness
• Also important with sleep, and sleep is essential to healing and overall health
  • May need to sleep in a recliner rather than a bed, initially
  • Will likely need to wear sling overnight for a period of time
• Includes taking prescribed pain medication and frequent icing

Consider performing gentle neck stretches to help manage potential neck discomfort post-operatively

• Particularly bending and rotating your head away from your surgical side
  • Not uncommon with both sling use and pain to get some over-activation of neck and upper back musculature which can result in increased discomfort