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Within the past month I have gotten two evals for adhesive capsulitis, with both patients presenting within the first stage and freezing stage. One of the patient’s is a 67 y/o female who is pre-diabetic and has a history of parathyroid dysfunction and the other patient is a 51 y/o who has no significant PMH or MOI. Both her and the other patient came in being told by their provider that they have frozen shoulder. As expected with the pathology and insidious onset that is hard to explain, they both had many questions. Before the two patients, I did not have as much experience treating patients with adhesive capsulitis so when it came to educating the patient on the pathology, I struggled a little bit. It was also difficult talking to them about expected prognosis and timeline for the pathology since based on what I’ve learned it can take up to over a year to resolve and can sometimes resolve on its own. That’s a difficult conversation to have with the patient, especially within the earlier stages where they’re having a lot of pain, and it’s interfering with their sleep, ADLs, and recreational activities. That’s not exactly what they want to hear.
The 67 y/o I’m working with especially has a lot of questions to ask and I feel like I keep answering the same questions every visit. I was trying really hard every time to provide her some sort of explanation for what could possibly be causing her pain. AJ and I talked about not trying to provide an explanation every time and being shorter and more concise discussing how pain with this pathology is weird and it’s not uncommon to feel pain in other places in the shoulder and the arm. I think it also helps having two people with it now since they are having similar experiences, I can reference one patient to the other to tell them what they are going through is not unusual.
I’m curious to know if anyone else has worked with someone with adhesive capsulitis and has had similar situations, or how you explained the pathology to them.
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