The Source / A field guide to feeling better
Shoulder
Reaching overhead, fastening a seat belt or sleeping on your side can reveal a shoulder problem before you know its name.
Can you point to it?
Select a label to explore its side of the body
Choose the closest area.
Pick a point on the close-up, or choose from the list below. Each one covers what might be going on, the details that help at a visit, and the research behind it.
Put the symptoms in context
Shoulder pain can involve a tendon, the joint or something nearby, and sometimes it starts in the neck. How it began and which movements have become limited are two of the most useful things you can tell us.
Follow the question
Explore shoulder
Each guide explains what the condition is, what the research shows and where it runs out, and when it calls for a different kind of care than ours. An exam is how we look for which one, if any, fits you.
- Condition guide
Shoulder pain
Pain when you reach, lift or sleep on your side, and the common shoulder-pain patterns behind it.
Understand this condition - Condition guide
Neck pain
Stiffness, referred pain and nerve symptoms, and the questions our exam sets out to answer.
Understand this condition - Condition guide
Work-related pain
How your job, any past injury and a practical plan for getting back to work and activity fit together.
Understand this condition
Where to start with shoulder pain
Our shoulder pain guide covers the common patterns, like a painful overhead reach, a rotator cuff problem or lost movement after an injury, and the warning signs. If symptoms run from the neck into the hand, read neck pain too.
With a shoulder, your goal can be as specific as reaching a shelf, putting on a coat or getting back to training. After a sudden injury, we'll want to know what changed right afterward.
Rotator cuff research: does more supervised exercise help more?
Not in the GRASP trial below. People given extra supervised exercise sessions did no better on the trial's main 12-month measure than those given one advice session with home exercise. Any plan we recommend comes after the exam and is built around your shoulder and your goals. The trial only studied rotator cuff disorders, so its results don't cover every cause of shoulder pain.
Follow the evidence
Research, with context.
Selected published sources behind what we've written, each with what it found and what it can't tell us. We give you both halves because no paper can diagnose you or predict how your own care will go.
Progressive exercise compared with best practice advice, with or without corticosteroid injection, for the treatment of patients with rotator cuff disorders (GRASP): a multicentre, pragmatic, 2 × 2 factorial, randomised controlled trial
708 adults with a new episode of a rotator cuff disorder.
What it foundMore supervised exercise sessions did not improve the primary outcome over 12 months compared with a best-practice advice session. Injection offered no long-term benefit.
What it can't tell usThe advice session included home exercise and self-management. Major trauma and several other shoulder diagnoses were excluded, and it doesn't compare every shoulder treatment.
Publication details & citation
Hopewell et al. Progressive exercise compared with best practice advice, with or without corticosteroid injection, for the treatment of patients with rotator cuff disorders (GRASP): a multicentre, pragmatic, 2 × 2 factorial, randomised controlled trial. The Lancet. 2021. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00846-1.
Read the publication record
Our editorial policy explains how to read these sources and what our clinical-review labels mean.