What Causes Persistent Pain In The Right Arm?

Brief Answer:
Muscle pain can last 8 weeks- see a physiotherapist, consider other causes

Detailed Answer:
Hello,
Thank you for asking at HCM.

I carefully read your question and understand your concern.

Shoulder pain can be devastating as it might prevent you from daily activities and also taking care of your self like dressing/undressing and so on, so I understand it is difficult.

There are several cases of the shoulder pain. The most common cause is muscular pain that means if you have hurt a muscle or tendons of muscles (as it happens with rotator cuff muslces that run withing the shoulder joint). If the pain is affected by movements than it is very likely related to muscle or joint problems.

Muscular pain can last for weeks and sometimes up to 6-8 weeks and if you continue to hurt the muscle it might go even longer. RICE is tried and helps some of the patients but sometimes still the pain can be there.
Making sure you do NOT keep your shoulder immobile for days and days is important, as this can cause what we call "the frozen shoulder" that means you might not be able to gain full range of motion in the shoulder.

I would recommend you to see a physiotherapist to check you and advise you the proper exercises to help muscles relax and strengthen. Myorelaxant together with paracetamol and ibuprofen might be helpful and rarely a steroid injection in the shoulder might be helpful also- the doctor has to decide this after examining you. Make sure you avoid movements that irritate your muscles and that might have brought the pain.

The shoulder joint might cause the pain also especially if you have pain when someone moves the arm while you relax it- this allows for muscles to relax and if you feel pain than the joint is the cause- an Xray of the shoulder would be helpful in diagnosis in this case.

Other causes of shoulder pain might be nerve pain from the problems with the vertebral discs of the neck. In this case the pain goes from the neck through the shoulder to the arm and you would feel numbness or the arm would be weaker. In this case you will need a visit with a neurologist doctor.

The heart and abdominal orgnas can rarely cause shoulder pain but should not be missed. This does not seem your case as shoulder pain from heart attack or abdominal organs would not be worse with movements. If the shoulder pain is not worse with movements of the shoulder than you will need an urgent visit to rule out those rare causes of shoulder pain.

I hope this answers to your question and is helpful to you.

Kind regards,

Dr Antoneta Zotaj

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