Shoulder and Elbow Surgery

If you live in Forth Valley, Fife and Tayside, you can access convenient and fast shoulder and elbow treatments and high-quality care at The Kings Park Hospital in Stirling.

Conditions of the shoulder and elbow respond well to early treatment, and in many cases, seeking help promptly when problems start can avoid the need for surgery.

You’ll soon find out what’s causing your issues and how to solve them at your appointment. Our Consultant Orthopaedic Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons can refer you to our physiotherapists or provide cortisone injections to relieve pain and inflammation in your shoulder or elbow caused by common conditions such as arthritis, tendinitis, bursitis and sports injuries.

However, if you need surgery, the hospital is fully equipped to provide a comprehensive range of surgical measures, including repairs to muscles and tendons, joint corrections, keyhole surgery and joint stabilisation.

Our Consultant Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons provide an outstanding service at our friendly hospital, supported by first-rate physiotherapists, radiologists, specialist nurses, and administration teams.

Shoulder and elbow surgery is a subspeciality of orthopaedics – a branch of medicine dealing with bones conditions, joint pain, and problems with ligaments, tendons and nerves.

Our experienced and highly trained local consultants at The Kings Park Hospital offer shoulder and elbow treatments from minor procedures to complex surgical cases to help you get back to painless movement and function.

Common conditions range from minor sprains and tennis elbow to more complex arthritis. Many minor ailments can often resolve themselves in several weeks with the appropriate treatment or exercise, whereas arthritis may require shoulder replacement surgery which has a longer recovery time.

We can treat most disorders without an operation, using treatments like physiotherapy and cortisone injections. However, shoulder and elbow surgery has significantly evolved, and now more conditions in the shoulder are treated using keyhole surgery (arthroscopic) than ‘open’ surgery.

In keyhole surgery, the surgeon makes a few minor cuts (incisions) to the skin, with most incisions being less than a centimetre wide.

We recommend a referral from your GP or physiotherapist, although many of our consultants see patients wishing to self-refer. It’s easy to book an appointment with one of our shoulder and elbow specialists through our website or by phone. If you have private medical insurance, you should get in touch with your insurer for approval before booking a consultation.

When you come for your appointment, you can expect our reception team to greet you with a smile, making you feel welcome.

Your consultant will show you into a private consultation room where they’ll give you all the time you need to discuss your concerns and go over your medical history before examining the relevant area.

Most self-limiting conditions like tennis elbow will get better over time and with the appropriate exercise. Your consultant may also suggest some treatments, such as steroid injections, or send you for diagnostics such as an x-ray – this can often occur in Kings Park Hospital on the same day as your consultation.

You won’t have to wait long before a specialist radiographer returns the x-ray, and the consultant can often give you a diagnosis that day.

If your consultant needs to investigate further, they may recommend a computerised tomography (CT) scan that takes pictures of the body in cross-sections or a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan that produces details images of body parts.

Both are painless procedures and take place at our sister hospital, The Ross Hall Hospital in Glasgow. It’s also common for a dye to be injected into the shoulder before an MRI scan so that the consultant can see tissue and blood vessels in detail.

The Kings Park Hospital provides a range of facilities for keyhole operations of the shoulder, usually as a day-case procedure.

The most common keyhole (arthroscopic) treatments for shoulders include:

• Rotator cuff repair – a keyhole repair of tears to the tendons around the shoulder joint
• Subacromial decompression – shaving bony spikes (osteophytes) growing on the bones or joints often formed due of arthritis
• Surgery to stabilise the shoulder if you have recurrent dislocation
• Correction of AC joint (acromioclavicular) osteoarthritis through surgery, often following initial treatments with steroids and anti-inflammatory medicines (NSAIDs) like Ibuprofen

The elbow treatments range from cortisol injections for tennis elbow to complete washout and radial head replacement surgery for arthritis or fractures.

Our shoulder and elbow consultants also treat nerve entrapment in the elbow (cubital tunnel syndrome). The surgery is known as cubital tunnel release.

If your consultant decides you need a complex shoulder replacement, this will be arranged at The Ross Hall Hospital in Glasgow due to the equipment required for the procedure. You’ll return to The Kings Park for any follow-up appointments and physiotherapy.

One of the main benefits of seeing a shoulder and elbow specialist at The Kings Park Hospital is the speed with which you’ll be seen, diagnosed and treated to get on the road to recovery.

You can often see a consultant within 48 hours, and by the time your consultation is over, you’ll have received a diagnosis. Invariably, you’ll also receive a tailored treatment plan showing you how they intend to get you back to normal as soon as possible.

Benefits:

• It’s a full-service hospital with a theatre department, imaging department (X-ray and ultrasound) and a team of physiotherapists, so you’ll rarely need to go anywhere else.
  
  
• Most diagnostic tests like x-rays take place on-site, so you can often have them on the same day.
  
  
• The only time you might go elsewhere is if you need a CT or MRI, which you can have at The Ross Hall Hospital in Glasgow. It’s also where complex shoulder replacement surgery takes place.
  
  
• You’re in good hands from the minute you arrive. Our friendly reception team, consultants, nurses, radiographers, and physiotherapists will make you feel at home.
  
  
• Our highly qualified, experienced consultant surgeons are up to date with the latest equipment and innovations in their sub-speciality.
  
  
• Most of our treatments for shoulder and elbow conditions are day cases. However, if you need an overnight stay, we have comfortable, fully equipped private rooms with en-suite bathrooms, TV and WiFi.