Winged scapular and TOS
 

Hi all, just curious... How many are out there with winged scapular and TOS?

I get some wicked stabbing pains from my shoulder blade. Which then refers to other areas like neck, collarbone region etc etc.

Typical movements like over stretching, reaching for objects, heavy shopping bags can so easily pull on my shoulder and start the ball rolling of symptoms.

Does PT, deep tissue massage on the shoulders help you or make it worse?

I may be able to get a few sessions of physio on the NHS, but I'm nervous to let someone touch me again!:(

yes I have this too.I posted a thread about it not too long ago,but havent yet found the right treatment for it. It seems to be a side condition of TOS. its where mine started and seems to be the source right now. I know there are certain exercises that you can do to strengthen the shoulder muscles around the scalpula. I havent found ones yet that dont flare me up but I will be working on this over the next few months. A good pt that understands this may be helpful but you need to be careful. if they flare you up STOP.

Yes. I was diagnosed with a winged scap before the word TOS even came out of a drs mouth. I ended up having surgery for my TOS before my scap and that was a HUGE mistake. I have whats called serrates antior palsy. There is NOTHING wrong with my long thoracic nerve. But the muscle (serrates antior) that controles the scapula, no longer functions like it should and causes scapula winging. Its rare, and even more rarer to find in a TOS paitent, which is why there were so many conflicting diagnoses when I was having both problems and why my TOS surgeon and Ortho have never had a case that had both problems. My crappy TOS surgeon told me it was related to my TOS and it would go away after surgery, my ortho said no it was a separate problem and it needed to be fixed. However I had a DVT and at the time my TOS surgeon had a more compelling case. I had the TOS surgery and it never corrected and about a year later that's when my TOS surgeon said "well it must be a separate issue", no duh! I went back to my ortho a couple of years later and he looked over everything and he said he could do surgery to fix my scap, however he would have needed to get into the same area where my TOS surgery was and he wasn't sure how bad it was going to be in there (scar tissue, muscles moved around into different areas do to rib removal) and where as he usually he has an 80% success rate, he was only giving me 50-50% because he couldn't guarantee that I would have more complications or not or that it would hold do to the TOS surgery. We tried PT, nothing has worked. Theres nothing I can do about it, unless I want a very invasive surgery that isn't guaranteed to work with possible more complications and im not willing to chance that again. Hes a very good surgeon, he did my friends surgery and she had a very successful surgery and he has done Olympians surgeries and they have done well. Hes very up front and honest and im thankful for that. He never pressured me into surgery and he told me what his actual success rate was and what mine looked like. You don't get to many surgeons like that. So if you HAVENT had TOS surgery and have this issue, look at ALL your options and find the right surgeon to look into this problem.

Its also very possible that my ortho was correct and I should have had the surgery for my scap first and see if that fixed the rest of the problems.



EDIT: Also look into taping with a PT. It can really help and gave me some relief when we did it. I just didn't have no results with it. I know others that had great results with it. But it doesn't hurt to try if you have the right PT that can do it and give you the manual work and exercises for your scap.

Yup my winged shoulders (minor chronic bp stretcthing/irritation) gave me tos

What kind of surgery is for the scalpula? Ive never heard of that. I'm pretty sure in my case that the ribs move around and pull on the muscles in the shoulder blade which in turn compresses the nerves. I think when i was seeing dr ando the pain in my scalp went away for awhile. he adjusted my ribs and I was doing streghtening exercises. I need to go back and see him!

I had it, but with stretching and therapy it got better. I do massage with active isolation stretching as well which helps.

they have to take part of the pec minor and attach it to the sarratus antior muscle and then drill a hole in your scap and attach it to your scap, turning it into a new muscle. And then your stuck in a brace for 3 months and then at 6months you start very intense PT program for a year. And you cannot lift anything over 5lbs for a year because the tendon can easily tear. We didn't know how this was going to work for a TOS patient because first of all most of us cant do an intense PT program, that being a main issue because the surgery would fail if that new muscle couldn't learn to function. Second we didn't know how I would handle being in a brace because that's another issue with TOS patients, any restriction like that usually causes vascular and nerve problems, and you have to be in the brace for 3 months or the tendon will tear. And he was going to need to get into my chest/side and back (yes it takes 3 incisions) and he wasn't sure how much scar tissue was gonna be in there and where everything was going to be because when you remove the rib everything shifts. Its a 6 hour surgery and he wasn't sure how much was going to need to be cleaned out. And if your pec minor isn't long enough or any good, which is the case is most TOS patients, then he cant use the tendon and the surgery is no good, so he was going to have to check that. All of that for an 80% success rate for only those that have only that 1 single problem. Odds aren't in our favor when TOS surgery is done for most surgeons that need to do secondary surgeries.

it doesnt sound too promising. Who is your surgeon? I havent heard of this before.