I'm still getting worked on from my shoulder surgery of a year ago, had to have an x-ray guided corticosteroid shot two days ago and more PT starting Monday since it's now frozen through a significant portion of its range of motion (portions of overhead, external rotation and behind my back). The longer you wait with damaged soft tissue, the more likely you may have permanent problems with arthritis and scar tissue, calcification etc in the future. If you need surgery on the shoulder, I don't necessarily see why you would wait. If you don't need it just yet, then that's different. Your ortho's advice is going to be better than ours. It also depends on what you're having repaired. If you have a diagnosed 'rotator cuff' problem, that's not a specific muscle, it's a set of 4 muscles, and it's usually the tendon of one of those (mostly the supraspinatus) that people injure most frequently. In my case the problem was the labrum (the cartilaginous cup that holds the head of the humerus), but until I had an MRI some of the doctors thought it was a rotator cuff thing since that's what gets blamed for so much shoulder pain.
