Supporting wall

This helps to prevent the patient with a rotator
cuff injury from leaning towards the unaffected side.

LIKE so many clinical signs, the painful arc of a rotator cuff injury often fails to present according to textbook standards.

When a patient can’t lift the arm above horizontal, and contorts his or her neck and back while attempting to do so, it can be a bit hard to tell what is glenohumeral joint movement and what is not.

Dr Daryl Ryter from St Kilda, Vic, asks his patients to stand with their contralateral side against a wall while he examines abduction. This prevents the patient from leaning to the unaffected side and helps sort the cuff from the bluff.