In our previous blog posts we have written on the limitations of MRI for many injuries and conditions. In general, these expensive tests have high rates of false positives where patients without pain often have positive results including ligament/labrum tears or tendon changes. The incidence of false of positives increases in athletes with the majority...
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” – Buddha. Mental health has a significant impact on recovery from many musculoskeletal diagnoses including low back pain, neck pain, and shoulder pain. Our thoughts and perceptions about our bodies and their ability to recover...
Tears in the meniscus, cartilage within our knees, can occur due to injury or degeneration attributed to the aging process. The latter is a much more frequent scenario and often these tears are found on MRIs of patients without knee pain. These false positive results cast doubt on the direct correlation between a picture of...
Patients with outer hip, lateral, pain have previously been diagnosed with trochanteric bursitis indicating the fluid filled sack between our hip muscle tendons and our thigh bone is to blame for their symptoms. In addition the -itis ending in the diagnosis leads us to believe there is an inflammatory process taking place in the hip....
Often in Physical Therapy we are asked if an image would help in our diagnosis or treatment of a patient’s symptoms. The answer is very dependent on the individual patient’s case but in most cases imaging has not been shown to improve outcomes. In prior posts we have discussed the strengths and limitations of diagnostic imaging...
We have previously written on low back pain and the dramatic rise in surgeries with this patient population, despite evidence of superior outcomes over conservative treatment and Physical Therapy. Prior research has documented the dramatic rise in the number of lumbar MRI imaging for the low back and a corresponding increase in the number of...
Up to 250,000 athletes will sustain an ACL injury each year and the majority of these patients will require Physical Therapy before and/or after their ACL reconstruction surgery. These athletes may be at risk of future lower extremity injuries either on their involved or uninvolved lower extremity because of inadequate physical therapy, poor movement patterns,...
Our prior posts on tendon injuries have described the structural changes that take place with chronic symptomatic tendinopathies. The disorganization of tendon fibers and the body’s attempts to heal the injured tendon are best viewed on ultrasound or MRI imaging. MRI is a very sensitive tool, but lacks specificity meaning a positive finding may or...
Lumbar Spinal Stenosis is a spinal diagnosis found in older adults and involves a narrowing of the canals in which the nerves exit the spine. It can be found in either the central canal of the spine or in the foramen where nerves exit on each side of the spine. Often these patients reports symptoms...
Is a picture really worth 1000 words? As our technology continues to improve MRI and CT scanners have become more proficient at finding changes in our spines. This higher imaging quality comes with a cost in that many of these positive findings like “bulging discs”, arthritis, “pinched nerves” and the frightening-sounding “degenerative disc disease” can...