{"id":577929,"date":"2026-07-31T23:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T23:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/577929\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T23:01:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T23:01:10","slug":"doctors-took-a-look-at-mans-painful-shoulder-they-found-the-joint-was-missing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/577929\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctors took a look at man’s painful shoulder\u2014they found the joint was missing"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 45-year-old construction worker went to the emergency department for his right shoulder, which was extremely swollen and becoming progressively more painful. Doctors took an X-ray to try to see what was causing the problem. But when the images came through, it was what they didn\u2019t see that explained the situation: His entire shoulder joint was gone, seemingly blasted apart into small, lingering pieces.<\/p>\n

The shoulder joint is a ball-and-socket joint, with the sphere-like head of the upper arm bone (humerus) sitting in the socket of the shoulder blade. According to a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/a>, the man\u2019s X-ray showed that he no longer had a ball at all or an intact socket. His upper arm bone was detached from the joint, and the sphere-like top of his upper arm bone (humeral head) was completely gone. The broken, headless humerus was instead left to float freely in the man\u2019s arm, unattached to his upper body.<\/p>\n


\n \"\"
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

The man\u2019s shoulder, visibly swollen, and his X-ray showing destruction of the humeral head with a free-floating upper arm bone.<\/p>\n

The man\u2019s shoulder, visibly swollen, and his X-ray showing destruction of the humeral head with a free-floating upper arm bone.<\/p>\n

Credit:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

New England Journal of Medicine, 2026<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Magnetic resonance imaging, meanwhile, found that the man\u2019s rotator cuff\u2014the group of muscles and tendons that holds the upper arm firmly in the socket\u2014was also destroyed. Three of the four main tendons (supraspinatus, infraspinatus, and subscapularis tendons) had full-thickness tears.<\/p>\n

The doctors diagnosed the man with a rare, ruinous condition called \u201cMilwaukee Shoulder Syndrome\u201d or MSS. The term was coined in 1981 based on the cases of four elderly women in Wisconsin who, like the man, had severe destruction of their shoulder joints and massive tears to their rotator cuffs. The condition is similar to\u2014and possibly a subtype of\u2014rapid destructive arthritis, which was identified a year later in 1982.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 45-year-old construction worker went to the emergency department for his right shoulder, which was extremely swollen and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60],"class_list":["post-577929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}