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Although the exact causes of frozen shoulder aren’t known, some shoulder specialists say they’ve seen an increase in cases among their patients over the past year and a half that may be connected to the pandemic.

Frozen shoulder typically progresses through several phases, beginning with the inflammatory phase, which is characterized by pain, Bishop said.

“Even if you have no shoulder pain, almost always there will be a line saying maybe you have a labrum tear or maybe you have a partial rotator cuff tear,” said Joaquin Sanchez-Sotelo, chair of the Division of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “That can be confusing, because it’s a red herring. It’s not the real reason for shoulder pain in frozen shoulder.”

“That could make the frozen shoulder much worse.”

But they emphasized that a majority of frozen shoulder cases can be treated without surgery.