As we age, our bodies experience massive amounts of wear and tear. Activity as simple as walking, for example, puts anywhere from four to six times our body weight on the ankle joint alone when it’s done at an incline. As a result, 75% of people in the United States will experience at least some degree of foot health problems in their lifetime. And that’s just looking at feet; daily activities also frequently lead to hip pain, back pain, and shoulder pain over time. A recent report suggested that more than 1.5 billion people around the world suffer from some type of chronic pain. In the United States alone, approximately 52.5 million adults have been diagnosed with some form of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, fibromyalgia, or gout. When an issue is severe enough to intervene with your quality of life on a regular basis, it’s time to look into the best options for treating your pain.

There are, of course, a wide variety of medications available to deal with pain, but when a problem becomes chronic, it is often better in the long run to consult an orthopedic surgeon. If the problem is in your joints, you can undergo orthopedic shoulder surgery, knee surgery, or hip surgery to provide long-term relief from worn out ligaments. If the pain is focused more in your back, you can consider the minimally invasive spine procedures that have been developed with great success.

Each of these surgeries can be tailored to directly alleviate whatever issue is causing you pain. To give you a greater sense of the possibilities, let’s look specifically at orthopedic shoulder surgery as an example. Your shoulders are the most flexible joints in your body, capable of much greater rotation than any of your other joints. This is great for human activity and invention, but it also means that any number of issues can arise as the joint wears out. Anything from tendinitis to torn rotator cuffs to fractured bones can result in significant pain that doesn’t recede over time. If you find yourself in need of orthopedic shoulder surgery, your surgeon will perform a full evaluation of your condition before deciding on the best plan of action. Depending on the type of problem being addressed and its severity, you might undergo either arthroscopy, an outpatient procedure performed with small incisions and an inserted camera, or open surgery. Overall, the solutions that are possible with these two types of surgery are as diverse as the problems that may be present in the first place.

Chronic pain is a prevalent problem, especially as the human race continues to live longer than ever before. Luckily, our abilities in the orthopedic surgery arena continue to expand and success rates continue to grow. These days, you can trust that no matter what is causing your pain, there is a perfect solution available to give you back your quality of life.