How Long Does it Take to Get Over a Dislocated Shoulder?

People often ask, how long does it take to get over a dislocated shoulder?

When you dislocate your shoulder, you tear ligaments and stretch things out. Some people can tolerate that and manage it without having an operation. Typically, it gets back on track after a couple of weeks.

But for younger, more athletic people who have more active lifestyles, the shoulders are almost always loose. So even when you get over that initial trauma of the dislocation and get it placed back in the joint, that typically takes a couple of weeks.

They’ll have this kind of instability in the shoulder where it always feels loose. And then it can come out again, too. So, it depends on the patient and the injury. Some people can get over it and tolerate it. Some people never get over it, and we end up doing an operation to fix it.