Dr. Vlad Gendelman, M.D., FAAOS

Thinning of cartilage in the joints of the foot. Bone spurs around the joints. Inflammation which will in response cause pain, swelling and possibly some redness in the area.

If you fail conservative treatment you may need surgery.

Heel pain is a symptom not a condition. Heel pain can be due to many different conditions. Depending on what is causing your heel pain, amount of time it takes to resolve will be vastly different. It also depends on whether or not you are treating the condition properly.

NSAIDs and ice. (NSAIDs - non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs)

Cortisone shot is one of the modalities used to treat bursitis and yes it can make it resolve in many patients.

Usually no. More likely than not, if you have pain shooting down the leg it is coming from your lower back, even if you don't experience lower back pain)

See an orthopaedic surgeon for an evaluation of your elbow. They will help you figure out if it is tennis elbow or another condition.

Pain with range of motion and tenderness to palpation over the torn ligament.

Most commonly shoulder bursitis is associated with shoulder impingement syndrome. There is a surgery for shoulder impingement. This surgery is usually done arthroscopically and is therefore called shoulder arthroscopy. The part of the surgery for impingement syndrome is called subacromial decompression. So together that would be shoulder arthroscopy and subacromial decompression.

It is very rare to tear a ligament in the shoulder so most likely you are referring to a torn tendon in the shoulder. Symptoms of a torn tendon would depend on which tendon you tore but generally they would be decreased range of motion with pain and weakness for the motion that this particular tendon is responsible for.

It is very rare that you would tear ligaments in your shoulder, so most likely you are referring to torn tendons. Torn tendon in the shoulder cannot heal on their own for mechanical reasons and have to be fixed surgically. So yes, you need surgery for torn tendons in the shoulder.

Yes that is generally something that can be done, but this is usually decided on case by case basis based on type of fracture, time from injury, time from application of cast, how loose the cast is, etc.

If both ankles are swollen it is usually a sign of a systemic problem which could be one of the following: heart, lungs, kidneys or central vascular problem. If one ankle is swollen it can be a sign of injury or vascular problem in that extremity,

When you are no longer taking narcotic pain medications and can turn the steering wheel at least 180 degrees with the affected arm.

Based on your description of the events and the way this particular bone looks on x-rays I feel that this is on old fracture non-union, however this does not look like it is from this summer. Looks a lot older.

Generally when a tendon (any of the rotator cuff tendons) tears in the shoulder it does not tear in the middle of the tendon but rather tears off of the bone. Tendons are what connects are muscles to bones, so muscle turns to a tendon and then the tendon connects to the bone. So if the tendon tears off of the bone, it still has the muscle attached on the other side. That muscles continues to pull on the tendon and over time the tendon gets further and further away from the bone where it used to attach. Since there is nothing to keep the tendon next to it's attachment on the bone, there is no way for the tendon to heal back down to bone so the only way to address this problem is with surgery. If it is not fixed, the muscle will keep pulling on the tendon until it get approximately 1-2 inches away from where it used to attach (depends on the size of the person) and at that point the muscle will not be able to do anything else (pull any further) and the muscle will just sit there. Over time, since the muscle is not doing anything it will start to wither away (atrophy). The muscle fibers get small and get replaced with fat. Once this process completes, the tendon can no longer be repaired, because even if you repair it and it heals back down to bone, the muscle is not going to be functional anymore. This process is not reversible. Hope this answers your question.

Breaking a bone is usually better because bones are very vascular and heal better and faster. Ligaments on the other hand do tend to heal in most cases but since their blood supply is very limited, they take much longer to heal in a lot of cases.

Average 3-6 months

Once you recover yes. Day after hip replacement, no. You weren't very specific with timing in your question. If climbing stairs is important to you, you can probably start working on that with the therapist a 2-4 days after your surgery depending on how you progress with walking. Walking comes first :)

No, a dislocation cannot heal itself. The dislocated joint has to be relocated, and then depending on the cause of the dislocation as well as on the associated injuries which can occur when dislocation happens, treatment can sometimes be operative and sometimes non-operative.