Prognosis of Shoulder Pain
Are you likely to reduce your pain after treatment? What will be the outcome? It depends on how long you have felt this symptom. In patients with acute shoulder pain, treatment success is around 70%. But the numbers are lower (44%) if you have chronic shoulder pain.
One-fourth of cases tend to improve after three months of treatment. After trauma, the same proportion of patients experiences complete recovery after six months. When patients do not improve after this period, the chance is that they will still feel some pain after one year.
A poor treatment outcome is more common if you have the psychosocial factors mentioned above or an established chronic pain syndrome such as fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis.