shoulder injury

Our user asked: "thank you for your time, I injured my shoulder at work about 9 months ago and went to physical therapy for it and it got better but not 100% it was a small tear in the superspintus and with maybe some sign of tendinopathy, i hurt my shoulder at work again about 1 week ago but this time i was having a lot of pain in my shoulder and in between my shoulder blades, the pain kept me from sleeping or falling a sleep and it even hurt when i took deep breaths, the doctor said that i just reinjured my shoulder and im doing therapy to make it better,i had xrays and an mri done on my shoulder mainly on the joint.mri showed pretty much the same thing minus the tear in the muscle. my question is this, now that most of the pain is gone and i can actually feel where the pain is coming from and it feels like its coming from between the spine and the scapula, should continue the therapy or have them recheck for another injury."

Ask a PT Response: "Glad to hear you are doing better. Often times I will continue to see a patient if his or her condition continues to progress and improve. In your case, you mention there has been some improvement but you continue to have symptoms in your scapular region. Therefore, it would be appropriate to continue with physical therapy. PTs' are problem solvers and I can probably assume that your PT will start to address your symptoms at the region of your scapula soon if you are no longer having pain at the shoulder. There can be various other conditions which could be contributing to the pain at the region of your scapula ie, biomechanical, tissue strain, cervical discogenic syndrome, etc. You may want to have further discussion with your PT to see what he or she may be thinking as why you continue to have pain at the region of your scapula. Best of luck to you on your road to recovery."