Neck and back pain are common ailments that affect millions of people worldwide. These conditions can range from mild discomfort to debilitating pain, impacting daily activities and overall quality of life. While there are various treatment options available, physical therapy has emerged as an effective and evidence-based approach for managing neck and back pain. A lot of patients are hesitant to do therapy. They are worried that it might be a waste of time and money. It’s true that therapy cannot fix all spine problems, but here are some reasons why it could work for you.
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Undergoing surgery is a stressful experience for many people. A lot is thrown at patients, often all at once, and no matter how much is explained, it still seems difficult to really comprehend what is happening. This is also true when it comes to the anesthesia that will be administered. Anesthesiologists play a critical role in ensuring your comfort and safety during surgery, but they need to have accurate information about your medical history, medications, and lifestyle to determine the best type and amount of anesthesia to use. Therefore, it is crucial to communicate openly and honestly with your anesthesiologist before the procedure to avoid any potential complications or adverse reactions.
Continue reading “WHAT TO TELL YOUR ANESTHESIOLOGIST”WHY DO SOME PEOPLE HAVE BACK SURGERY MULTIPLE TIMES?
If you know more than one or two people who have had back surgery, you probably know someone who has had multiple back surgeries. And you may have asked, “Why did you need to have surgery again?” You may have wondered, “If you had surgery, wasn’t your back fixed? Shouldn’t it be like new again?”
Continue reading “WHY DO SOME PEOPLE HAVE BACK SURGERY MULTIPLE TIMES?”TO CHIROPRACTOR OR NOT TO CHIROPRACTOR
Doing a home renovation takes a lot of work by a lot of different people. You need carpenters, painters, plumbers, and electricians just to start. Likewise, a spinal renovation might need a team of specialists to optimize your spine health and condition. One member of the team might be a chiropractor.
Chiropractic care is a form of healthcare that focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disorders of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems. Chiropractic care is based on the principle that the body has the ability to heal itself, and that the role of the chiropractor is to facilitate this healing process by restoring proper alignment and function to the spine and other joints in the body.
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I get asked about acupuncture a lot. And to be honest, patients have given me pretty mixed results. Some patients have had a great experience and absolutely love it. Others felt it to be a waste of time. Ultimately, for some patients and for some conditions acupuncture probably won’t help. However, some patients do benefit and it is worth a try if you have back or neck pain.
Continue reading “ABOUT ACUPUNCTURE”WHY AM I BEING REFERRED TO A PAIN SPECIALIST?
Interventional pain procedures are an essential part of the management of many kinds of spine and pain conditions. Even though pain procedures, as a general rule, do not cure the problem, they can provide excellent pain relief. Furthermore, pain procedures can also provide valuable diagnostic information, as the response to an injection or other procedure can help confirm that a particular pathology is the primary pain generator.
Interventional pain procedures are minimally invasive medical techniques designed to treat chronic pain conditions. These procedures aim to alleviate pain by targeting the nerves responsible for transmitting pain signals to the brain. There are a variety of tools in the interventional toolkit including nerve blocks, trigger point injections, epidurals, ablations, or nerve stimulation among others.
Continue reading “WHY AM I BEING REFERRED TO A PAIN SPECIALIST?”POSTOPERATIVE NUTRITION
Undergoing surgery can be a physically and emotionally challenging experience for anyone. While the surgery itself is crucial, a proper recovery process is just as important. One key element to a successful recovery is good nutrition. Eating the right foods can help speed up the healing process, reduce the risk of complications, and boost overall health. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some tips for good nutrition after surgery.
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If you don’t suffer from nausea or even vomit a few times after surgery, consider yourself extremely lucky. A lot of different treatments are given to patients automatically around the time of surgery because nausea is so prevalent. However, for some patients that is still not enough and the nausea and stomach discomfort can be worse than the surgical pain.
If you know from past experiences that you are prone to nausea, let your doctor know before surgery because there are some special precautions that can be taken to make surgery more palatable, both literally and figuratively.
Continue reading “POSTOPERATIVE NAUSEA AND VOMITING”DECIPHERING YOUR MRI RESULTS
Reading your MRI report may make you feel like the character from Dr Seuss’s “What was I afraid of?”
I was deep within the woods
When suddenly I spied them.
I saw a pair of pale green pants
With nobody inside them.
I wasn’t scared but yet I thought
What could those pants be there for?
What could a pair of pale green pants
Be standing in the air for?
When you read the radiologist’s description of your results, it can seem just as strange. Except this time, the stranger in the pants is what’s going on inside you.
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Global Sagittal Balance
Some patients need fusions.
If you need a fusion, even a small one, it is important to consider how the fused segment will affect the balance of the spine. Once the spine is fused, it is relatively permanent. Therefore, if your spine is fused out of balance, you may more or less be out of balance forever.
Global sagittal balance is an important concept in spine surgery and can profoundly affect surgical outcomes, especially in spinal fusion procedures. Global sagittal balance refers to the alignment of the spine and pelvis in the sagittal plane, which is the plane that divides the body into left and right halves. In a healthy individual, the spine and pelvis are aligned to maintain a stable and efficient posture where the head is essentially centered over the hips and pelvis. However, when this alignment is disrupted, it can lead to various spinal disorders, including chronic pain and disability.
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