Can a Brace Help Shoulder Instability?

A common question people ask is can a brace help with shoulder instability? Not really, honestly.

The one situation is like, let’s say you’ve got a football player and they’ve dislocated their shoulder and they’re just trying to get through the season. When a football player dislocates their shoulder and they want to go back to contact sports, we recommend fixing it 99% of the time because it will keep coming out unless we fix it.

But if they just want to get through the season without having surgery and you don’t want to shut them down and do the operation right then, we’ll put them in these braces that don’t let them lift their arm all the way. That will help stop them from coming out.

But people don’t want to live in a brace like that. That’s a specialized situation for a contact athlete where you’re just trying to get them through the season and then fix it afterward.

But in general, I don’t use them. I’ve never used them. For most people, it’s like you live with this thing or get it fixed. People wouldn’t be miserable wearing that brace all day every day. They would never do it.