Study Connects Shoulder and Heart Problems

A hunch he had had for more than 20 years proved to be accurate for Kurt Hegmann, M.D., director of the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Utah. According to Daphine Chan, writing for the Deseret News, Hegmann, for more than 20 years, had noticed that patients with musculoskeletal disorders like tendonitis and carpal tunnel often also had issues with high blood pressure, diabetes or tobacco use.

“It got me to wonder if there wasn’t a cardiovascular disease mechanism for these different disorders, " said Hegmann. Now he may have an answer. A study led by Hegmann reveals that people who have risk factors for heart disease are several times more likely to have shoulder and rotator cuff problems.

Chan quoted Hegmann as saying, "Even when you expect to find something and you find it, you're still surprised. It's the joy of, 'Oh my gosh, a theory is panning out.'"

Researchers at the University of Utah and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, began recruiting participants for Hegmann’s study in 2002. They enrolled more than 1, 200 workers who worked in over a dozen different occupations and surveyed each one about his health problems.

An ergonomic team also videotaped each participant at their jobs. They measured the weight of whatever objects the participants lifted or moved as part of their job to determine the physical stress the participants were under. Then they followed the participants for nine years.

When they looked at the data, the findings about shoulder injuries stood out.

Chan reports that the data showed a strong association between cardiovascular disease risk factors—things like hypertension, tobacco use and diabetes along with shoulder joint pain and rotator cuff tendinopathy. The more risk factors a patient had, the more likely he or she was to have shoulder issues, according to the study.

“When adjusted for factors like gender, body mass index, job satisfaction and family stress, the 36 people with the most severe risk factors were 4.6 times more likely to have shoulder joint pain and 6 times more likely to have rotator cuff tendinopathy, ” wrote Chan.

Hegmann found that people with midlevel cardiac disease risk factors were 1.5 to 3 times more likely to have one of the shoulder conditions.

“When you see that kind of pattern, the probability of there being a significant cause is much higher, ” Hegmann said. "These are not minor risks.”

The study is to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.