Sleeping on the Painful Shoulder: Always a Bad Night’s Sleep

As orthopaedic surgeons, with a keen interest in shoulders, we commonly come across the patient who complains of pain with overhead activities and difficulty lifting heavy weights. A more common, and often subtler, complaint that points to shoulder pathology is pain sleeping on the affected shoulder at night. Many patients with shoulder pathology describe a deep aching pain to the shoulder at night made worse by the application of pressure while sleeping on the affected shoulder. The cause of this nocturnal sleep pain is unknown. It may be explained by biomechanical or biochemical causes.