IAQs – Shoulder & Elbow Surgery

In our experience, there does seem to be some relationship between hand dominance and shoulder problems as patients tend to present more with problems on their dominant side but the difference is not huge (57% dominant side vs 43% non-dominant side).

In our experience, there doesn’t seem to be much of a relationship between hand dominance and elbow problems as these tend to present equally (50% non-dominant side vs 50% dominant side)

In our experience, males tend to present more with shoulder problems than females (60% vs 40%)

In our experience, males tend to present more with elbow problems than females (67% vs 43%)

The private practices of Dr Cass, Dr Young and Prof Sonnabend are collectively known as “Sydney Shoulder Specialists” and more information regarding same can be found at www.sydneyshoulder.com.au.

This is a difficult question to answer. A majority of patients in our database (37.5%) reported no known injury for their shoulder problems. Sport was the next most listed cause accounting for 25.5% of presentations. Falls (either from a bicycle or otherwise eg trip and fall) were noted as the third most prevalent cause accounting for 16.1% of presentations. 10.7% were attributed to “other” accidents, 7.8% to work, 2.4% to motor bike accidents and car accidents.

It is important, however, to bear in mind two things. First, the distribution of injury cause would look significantly different if you surveyed the emergency or outpatient clinics of a public hospital and second, the true cause of injury may have been sport, work, fall or repetitive injury etc. but this has either been forgotten or ignored because symptoms did not appear immediately.

The injury causes and percentages reported relate to shoulder problems that present to our surgeons in their private rooms.

Again, this is a difficult question to answer. A majority of patients in our database (32.1%) reported no known injury for their current elbow problems. Sport was the next most listed cause accounting for 24.5% of presentations. Falls (either from a bicycle or otherwise eg trip and fall) were noted as the third most prevalent cause accounting for 20.8% of presentations. 11.3% were attributed to “other” accidents, 9.4% to work and 1.9% to motor bike accidents and car accidents.

Once again, it is important to bear in mind that the distribution of injury cause would look significantly different if you surveyed the emergency or outpatient clinics of a public hospital and that the true cause of injury may have been sport, work, fall or repetitive injury etc. but this either has been forgotten or ignored because symptoms did not appear immediately.

The injury causes and percentages reported relate to elbow problems that present to our surgeons in their private rooms.

Shoulder injuries rank number 2 in the top 10 sporting injuries (number 1 is knee injuries).

One possibility with football injuries is that there has been an increasing amount of tackling both during training and in the actual games.

Elbow injuries rank number 4 behind ankle injuries (number 3) in the top 10 sporting injuries.

Some of the more memorable injuries we’ve seen to shoulders and elbows include as reported to us include:

• Hit by a cow (45 year old man)
• Caravanning (67 year old woman)
• Bar brawl (81 year old man)
• Dragon boat racing (41 year old woman)
• Yanked by a child (33 year old man)
• Fell off Segway (63 year old woman)