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I'm kicking off a new topic thread for this. The article was brought to our attention by boytos:

Originally Posted by boytos

I talk about this :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8427413

http://www.silcom.com/~dwsmith/ajs293.html

If it work it's good, if it's fail it does not matter.

blood clots, aneurysms don't appaear in 3 weeks of trapezius musculation..

It was published in the American Journal of Surgery, Feb 1993. Hey it's nice to see surgeons being respectful of non-surgical approaches.

Table and Figure

The first link is missing the Table I and Figure I, but I have purchased the article. I'm not allowed to share copies of the article according to the terms of service of the site that sold it. However, I will describe some things from it.

The exercise is to elevate shoulders and hold for count of 5, then relax shoulders. Then repeat.

There is no warning to be careful not to engage the scalenes, scm, etc. Although I'm sure you all would agree with me that there should be.

The first table shows 3 weeks of exercise, as mentioned in the public abstract. Exercise is every day, so 21 days straight. Number of times per day is 5 - 6 which surprised me. Reps range from from 10 to 20. Week 1 is no weights; week 2 is 3 lb weight in each hand; week 3 is 5 lb weight in each hand.

Perhaps this is how one exercises when trying to change posture or body shape, as opposed to just simply strength.

Figure 1 shows mean symptom levels before and after the program for things like pain in hands, in arms, in neck, pins/needles, weakness in hands, in arms. On a 10 scale these were between 5 - 7 with the pain elements being higher than the weakness. After the program, these were between 1.5 - 3 for improvements in all areas.

Additional Comments

Note that the researchers excluded patients with serious problems like cervical rib or positive EMG results showing nerve entrapment. Basically they seem to be treating people with what I often see called "disputed NTOS" and/or mild ATOS/VTOS.

Also, the following site which was linked from ScienceDirect shows that 31 articles referenced this one. I'm guessing most of them cite it in passing like "...physical therapy has been used to treat thoracic outlet syndrome [3]...", but it would be interesting to know if any of them say anything more specific, whether critical or complimentary. boytos, I nominate you for that research.

http://www.scopus.com/results/citedb...QGTpVKrpzN%3a2

That's a gnarly URL; I don't know if it will last. But if you poke around the web you should be able to get the list.

My Plans

Regarding me personally, I do have a depressed shoulder girdle on my TOS side although it looks better to me than it did months ago when my health crisis hit and this journey started. And I've also improved with fewer and less severe symptoms. Furthermore when my shoulder girdle became more depressed by power walking with arms straight, that's when my symptoms got worse.

So I may try this protocol in order to make further progress, but probably not til mid-Jan or later as I'm in the middle of other things.

I may also share it with my PT and see what she says first.

Further Research

This was written in the early 90's. Is the information still current? Did anyone replicate this? It's only 8 patients.

If it does work there are further interesting questions like: Should you do it for 4 weeks? 5? How many times per day is optimal?

This also stimulates the idea of doing further searching on the web with terms like:
"thoracic outlet syndrome" elevate shoulders
"thoracic outlet syndrome" shoulder elevations

...to see what else comes up. I have not done this yet.

Hey boytos, any other papers on exercise programs for TOS besides that PRI/football one?