Bursitis Health Video

Bursitis is an inflammation of sacs containing synovial fluid called bursae. Learn about bursitis, including treatment options, in this video.

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Get plenty of rest
Apply an ice compression
Seek medical advice

About this Author

Dr. Stallworth is board certified in rehabilitation and phsycial medicine. She graduated from Baylor College of Medicine and finished her residency at Baylor. Dr. Stallworth is known for being a superb and compassionate physician that believes in not only health of the body of the mind as well. She currently serves on the board of Centennial Medical Center and is a former board member of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. She now resides with her family in middle Tennessee.

DR. CATHERINE STALLWORTH: Hi. I'm Dr. Cathy Stallworth, and I'd like to share with you my approach to bursitis, how I diagnose it, what I recommend for my patients. Bursitis is a very interesting issue. Basically, what a bursa is--this is a model of your shoulder, okay? This is your shoulder blade. Your collar bone sits in like this. This is the arm. I'm using this balloon to demonstrate a bursa. You've got these little bursal sacs that help to protect the joints. They're typically underneath the tendons, where the muscles attach to the bones. And typically, the sacs are just--they're not very full. They may have a little fluid in them, but they're not very prominent. And again, they just kind of help to keep things moving, decrease friction. But what happens when you actually get a bursitis is if for some reason you get some impingement on the bursa, the bursa can actually fill up with fluid even more. So someone would say a bursitis in the shoulder would have a bursa that was swollen. When you get this swelling, it can be quite painful. And some of the really common areas where we see bursitis are the shoulder, the back of the elbow, the lateral hip and the knee. People with pain in the outside of the hip typically have trochanteric bursitis. And again, the trochanteric bursa, normally sitting here, not inflamed, just nicely decreasing friction over the iliotibial band that runs from here in the pelvis down to the knee. And when it gets inflamed, you can imagine something like this. And again, stretching the band that's popping back and forth over the greater trochanter will significantly decrease your symptomatology. So one of the things about shoulder bursitis, I see shoulder bursitis in a lot of people who have rounded shoulders. What happens is when the shoulder is round and you try to lift your arm, and you can try this yourself, you'll feel a lot of impingement in the shoulder. It's that impingement that irritates the bursa that leads to inflammation that leads to pain. So one of the things I have people do is work on stretching through the front of the chest, bringing the shoulders back and then creating a lot of space in the joint. Again, just this simple activity of working on the posture through here can decrease your symptoms of bursitis. And we recommend rest. We also recommend ice. If this is an area where you can apply some compression, you may want to do that. If you're not responding to these conservative measures, I highly recommend you seek the services of a physician.