[Functional anatomy of shoulder-arm pain (author's transl)].

The treatment of pains felt in the shoulder-arm region depends on the pathogenesis of the individual case. For this reason the functional anatomical conditions which can cause pain in various diseases are first described. This is followed by a presentation of the pathophysiological mechanisms of the causation of pain. The shoulder girdle is a functional skeletal motor unit which includes joints and muscles of the arm, neck and trunk. Disturbances of one structural element of the shoulder girdle are reflected as muscular distortion of the entire shoulder girdle and possibly also of the neighboring parts of the body communicating with the shoulder girdle. Shoulder-arm pain can arise in principle from two different sources: stimulation of pain receptors (receptor pain, physiological excitation of pain) and by functional disturbance of pain conducting and pain producing neuronal structures.