Dr. Armin Tehrany, Orthopedic surgeon of Mount Sinai Hospital, reviews many treatment options he recommends for shoulder injuries including, cold packs, hot packs, and steroid injections.

Doctor Tehrany: Steroid injections when properly indicated should be used. Hot and cold packs can be very affective for shoulder problems especially when a patient first gets them. So let's say after playing a game the shoulder feels swollen and sore, that's when a cold pack can be real helpful. Because what it does is by cooling the temperature of the skin and the muscles and the tissues in the shoulder there's less pain. Hot packs work very well for chronic shoulder soreness. So during the day for example it's just sore in general or it feels tight; the heat helps a lot because it increases the blood flow to the shoulder. Steroid injections when properly indicated should be used. If I want to give someone pain relief here in the shoulder because they've got bursitis, they've got tendinitis and they can't sleep well, rather than having them take an anti inflammatory taken by mouth where it has to go all through the body before it finally gets into the shoulder, I like to just give the steroid anti-inflammatory right in the shoulder.