What Are the Causes of Pain Under the Right Shoulder Blade?

When suffering from pain under your right shoulder blade, your doctor may make the determination that you are having a gallstone attack. When a gallstone lodges in a duct, this results in a blockage. The symptoms of a lodged gallstone include pain between your shoulder blades; pain in your right shoulder; intense pain in the upper right portion of your abdomen and equally intense pain right below your breast bone or sternum in the center of your abdomen, according to the Mayo Clinic 1.

Identification

Gallstone pain can last for 15 minutes or several hours. Vomiting may accompany the pain as can sweating. The pain is very often felt under, or between, the shoulder blades and is likely to occur after a high fat meal has been eaten.

Treatment

This condition can be surgically treated via a cholecystectomy, which is a laparoscopic technique used to remove the gallbladder. This procedure is far less invasive and easier to recover from than the surgical procedure that used to be done to remove the gallbladder.

Considerations

A heart attack can manifest as pain between the shoulder blades. Usually that pain is accompanied by tightness in the chest; shortness of breath; a squeezing pain in the chest along with pressure; gas-like pain; weakness and fatigue; indigestion and pain spreading to the neck, arms and shoulders.

Other Possibilities

When esophageal cancer occurs, one of the symptoms is a pain between the shoulders blade, along with pain when swallowing; pain behind the breastbone; pain in your throat or back; vomiting; coughing up blood; weight loss; loss of appetite and hiccups accompanied by the sensation that food is getting stuck in your throat or chest. Another condition that can cause pain under your shoulder blade is liver cancer.

Early signs of this condition include pain around the right shoulder blade or pain in between the shoulder blades; discomfort in the right side of your belly; a hard lump in the belly, right below the rib cage on the right side, yellow (jaundiced) skin and abdominal fullness and swelling.

Culprits

Pain under the right shoulder blade can be caused by poor posture; muscle strain; stress; a muscular injury or sleeping in an uncomfortable position. Even a bra that doesn’t fit properly can cause shoulder blade pain.