Acromioclavicular (AC) joint injuries are among the most common injuries experienced in contact sport athletes. As a Sports Chiropractor, Dr. Andrew understands that athletes young and old can suffer from this injury. In a recent study, 41% of collegiate football players and 40% of NFL quarterbacks will suffer an AC joint injury in their career (1). And this is just football, not all the other contact sports you or your child might be playing!
What is an AC Joint Injury?
Have you ever had shoulder pain located on the top point of the shoulder after a fall or impact while your arm is held tight to your side? There is a good chance that you have, at some point in your life, had an AC joint injury! This happens when the acromion and the clavicle cause a stretch or a separation of the AC ligaments and damage the surrounding musculature.
Athlete AC Joint Injury Treatment Recommendations
There are operative and non-operative treatments for AC joint injuries and the treatment you receive is based on the severity of the injury. Regardless of which treatment you receive, to get back to the competition you will have to go through rigorous rehab exercises. There is not a lot of research evidence to help understand which rehab is the best, but this article breaks down what is available for 2 different non-operative treatment options and makes an important point that is stressed by Kinach Chiropractic, "Although standardization of rehabilitation protocols amongst patients can be considered experimentally appropriate, it is unsuitable for addressing individual patient goals, symptoms, and deficiencies; instead, therapy should be tailored to each individual patient" (1)
AC Joint Rehab
When rehabbing the AC joint, it is very important to stress that it is not just an AC joint injury as 94% of patients with AC joint separations had injury to the trapezius and/or deltoid (2). There are generally 4 phases of rehab, starting with immobilization to "return to play" active exercises (1). This is a blanket protocol that doesn't focus much on scapular dyskinesis and could in fact keep your pain lingering for a longer period of time. Chiropractic care is important in these situations because there could be a decrease in thoracic spine or scapula mobility that could be addressed with proper adjustment techniques. Therefore adding corrective exercises to help regain scapular control can help improve symptoms faster and is exactly how Dr. Andrew Kinach focuses his chiropractic care.
Preventing AC Injuries In Athletes
When looking to prevent AC injuries, the goal is to increase the strength of the shoulder before an injury occurs. This is done by including some of the exercise techniques mentioned above with heavier loads to increase the strength and endurance of the muscles of the shoulder. The other way that we focus on prevention is by decreasing the gap between active movement (how far you can move yourself) and passive movement (how far someone else can move you). Decreasing this gap leaves less room for injury because you will have the muscle strength to control yourself in the vulnerable areas.
Conclusion
When an AC joint injury happens, it's important to establish if surgery is needed, then begin treatment by removing pain and then slowly adding in a range of motion exercises. From there we can focus on increasing scapular control as well as decreasing strain on the AC joint during activity. Finally, it is all about getting you back into your sport with specific exercises mimicking in-game situations to see how you stand up to it. If you are looking at preventing AC joint injuries, using some of the rehab concepts to increase scapula stability can be done to help build a solid shoulder complex. Contact Kinach Chiropractic today to get you back to feeling your best!
LeVasseur, Matthew R., et al. "Acromioclavicular joint injuries: effective rehabilitation." Open access Journal of Sports Medicine (2021): 73-85.
Lizaur A, Marco L, Cebrian R. Acute dislocation of the acromioclavicular joint. Traumatic anatomy and the importance of deltoid and trapezius. J Bone Joint Surg Br. 1994;76-B:602–606. doi:10.1302/ 0301-620X.76B4.8027149
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