Hey man,

A circumferential or 360 degree tear is pretty gnarly. How'd ya do it? Was it years of dislocations or one nasty incident? I'm not sure how old you are, and I tried answering for myself by checking your profile to no avail, but it'll tell a lot about healing prospects post surgery. First off, I would like to say that I am not a physician so take my advice with a grain of salt. I had both shoulders repaired myself and worked as a tech for 5 years in PT in my undergrad and worked exclusively with our shoulder/elbow/and hand patients so I think I may have some qualifying opinion here. Regardless, with a complete tear you will absolutely need surgery. The glenoid labrum has such a lack of blood flow that healing is pretty much non-existent, similar to the meniscus, that will not heal even some minor tears with years of time off and PT. Yes, some can strengthen their cuff muscles to compensate in small to moderate tears, but large tears will just scar over and will lead you straight to premature osteoarthritis. You will read posts in which some will claim they had a "huge tear" and did not get surgery, many people are very misunderstanding of the function of the labrum, usually when pressed these people will reveal they had a "Bankart tear" or a "Reverse Bankart"(or even a SLAP) which when summed together are massive tears, not alone. I have never heard of someone with a large tear successfully skipping out of surgery unless this person was the non-athletic type. Even then, living with a non healing tear for years will cause massive joint problems in the future. In my surgeries my first was 270 degrees torn and my second 180 degrees torn, massive tears both requiring six anchors each neither had biceps involvement/RC/tendons/ligaments. That said, had I tried to continue my sport, bodybuilding, and ignore doc's orders I'd be in a world of trouble as time went on, especially since mine were the result of subluxations/dislocations. You see, the more torn your labrum is the easier it is for the humeral head to dislocate from the shoulder capsule which in your case is now being held together by your rotator cuff. Your labrum is the main stabilizer in your shoulder, and your rotator cuff supports the stability by holding things in place. When you have no labrum function, which you don't at all, your arm will dislocate easier every time and when it pulls out of the capsule like that it stretches what is stabilizing it with it which can result in tears of the cuff/ligaments or at the very least pull them really badly resulting in a very stretched out capsule.

The point I'm trying to get across is that any shoulder with even a moderate tear is at risk of doing a ton of harm in not heeding to doctors advice and taking time off, let alone the rare complete tear. I had to take a year off of lifting and to be honest it drove me absolutely mother fcking bat sht crazy. I know the feeling, it sucks. If you get the surgery now instead of later you'll recover quicker and have less damage to repair, regardless of when you do it though, you'll need to avoid risky activities. For the time being you can PT the shoulder and also be sure to get a second and third opinion on your shoulder. If you didn't have an MRI arthrogram(w/ contrast) confirming your labrum is indeed torn it was simply a doctors own opinion after evaluation to which he could possibly be mistaking it/overstating the severity. I would definitely recommend you visit at least one more top shoulder specialist before signing up for any surgery. As a side note- in my MRI's both said I had a small posterior(in the back) tear that didn't sound like it needed operating and both times they found huge tears. For me I could lift heavy at 5 months both times, but to play a sport with those extreme movements like basketball(which caused it) took 8 or 9.

Good luck.