Dr. Armin Tehrany, Orthopedic surgeon of Mount Sinai Hospital, reviews the signals that give away a shoulder injury and explains the usefulness of the MRI.

Doctor Tehrany: There are many different disorders in the shoulder and depending on what their age is, what their medical history is, and what kind of difficulties they have, we formulate a plan. Certain things that tip me off to potential problems include; a lot of night pain, difficulty sleeping, so much weakness where the patient can barely use the arm and find that they're limited in raising arm above their head, or bringing the arm into this kind of provocative position because they're worried it's going to come out. Those are the kinds of things that make me concerned about something that's torn or something that's badly damaged that needs further work up. There are many different disorders in the shoulder and depending on what their age is, what their medical history is, and what kind of difficulties they have, we formulate a plan. I will tell you my threshold for getting an MRI scan for the shoulder is actually very low, non-invasive test and gets us the information we need. That being said, MRI and other imaging studies are only good for us after we've done a good history, gotten the information, gotten to know the patient, done a good thorough physical exam. If there's one thing I can tell you about the importance of MRI and imaging studies versus the old fashioned history and physical exam, we don't treat the MRI scan we treat the patient.