Comment by seanhunter

I’ve had two shoulder surgeries (one on each side) and they have been life-changing. On one side I’ve gone from extremely restricted movement and severe pain to complete freedom of movement and no pain. On the other side I now have total freedom of movement and some pain returned after 5 or so years so but whereas the pain before was more or less constant and completely unbearable now it aches a little sometimes when I have a bad day.

Just my anecdote but I would say it clearly matters a lot how good your surgeon is and also how seriously you take recovery (which is a slow and painful process in itself). If you have a good surgeon and you do your physio exercises like a good invalid it seems to make a big difference.

I would say ask your surgeon what the reasonable expectation for recovery would be. Mine was pretty frank with me that there isn’t 100% relief in 100% of cases but I felt comfortable enough with the error bars she gave me that I went ahead and in my case that turned out to be a great decision (whereas for example I talked to an eye place about Lasik and it turned out my current vision is within the range of what they would consider successful surgery so I decided not to go ahead in that case).