The human shoulder is the most flexible joint we have - if everything is working properly. Here is a little primer on it to my understanding.
Your shoulder is made up of bones, muscle, cartilage, tendons and ligaments. Throw in a bursa and some special little tissue and you almost have it. Don't forget blood supply and nerves.
Three bone structures meet there. The ball of your humerus (the upper arm bone); the scapula (shoulder blade); the clavicle (collar bone). The scapula has a semi-circular cavity in it called the glenoid. It is into this that the humerus ball fits and rotates.
Of course, tendons connect the muscles of the arm, back, shoulder and chest to the bones. These muscles and tendons working together we call the rotator cuff. They hold things together.
Ligaments hold the bones one to another at the joint. Slip that bursa (a fluid filled sac) in between the top of the humerus head and the scapula and clavicle bones for friction-free movement.
That glenoid cavity is super-important. When you were born, it is lined with cartilage which makes for smooth, pain-free movement. But it's not really very deep. Around the edge of the glenoid cavity is the labrum. The labrum is additional cartilage material to make the cavity deeper and help keep the joint clean.
Most problems with the shoulder have to do with some trauma that causes the ball to come out of the socket (shoulder separation - stretched/torn ligaments and tendons) or deterioration/tearing of the glenoid cartilage and labrum because of repetitive motion (like throwing a ball) or arthritis.
Most of these problems can be corrected with minimally invasive arthroscopic surgery.
*o*
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