Shoulder Pain Pump Delivers More than Physical Damage

July 29th, 2009. By janem

Imagine having shoulder surgery to make you better and instead, it makes you worse. In fact, it ruins your career–forever. That’s what is happening to some people who have been given a shoulder pain pump after surgery who now have to deal with dead cartilage.

Intra-articular pumps were designed to be placed in the shoulder tissue for pain relief. Before these pumps existed, patients were given pills or injections to ease the pain under the watchful eyes of medical staff. But hospital beds are scarce and most medical facilities want you out ASAP, so patients would go home earlier to recover with these pain pumps.

But some people didn’t recover-in fact the pain pumps have harmed them irreparably. Doctors began to see their patients develop chondrolysis, which is severe damage to the shoulder cartilage. Many patients suffer shoulder injuries because they use their shoulders in their careers-athletes for instance. So not only do they suffer extreme pain and loss of motion from these toxic pain meds destroying cartilage, now they’re also out of work, no doubt with spare time to file a lawsuit against the manufacturer.

Tags: shoulder pain pump

This was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 11:17 am and is filed under Emerging Issues . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.