Rehabilitation and Return to Sports After Shoulder Injuries

The aim of this chapter is to guide you through the rehabilitation of athletes presenting with the most frequently encountered sports-related shoulder injuries we see in the clinic. We will not be able to go through specific rehabilitation plans for every type of shoulder injury in all the different sports that are out there, but rather we aim to give you a good foundation that will support your clinical reasoning and rehabilitation of the most common shoulder injuries seen in sport. The first section of this chapter covers general shoulder rehabilitation principles. In the second part, we focus on more specific rehabilitation and how different injuries may have different rehabilitation approaches. The final section covers some special considerations such as rehabilitation of youth athletes and throwers.