Diagnosis
Diagnosis is the cornerstone of effective medical care, enabling healthcare providers to accurately identify and address patients’ health concerns. Through a combination of clinical evaluation and diagnostic tests, healthcare professionals can formulate tailored treatment plans to meet individual needs.
Subscribe to the BlogWhat Causes Tightness in the Side of the Neck?
On this page: Tight scalene muscles Scalenes compensating for other muscles Ways to treat tightness in the side of the neck I’ve already told you about my left upper trap; now meet my left scalene. When I lift too much, these muscles, which live on the side of the neck, get tight. Tight Scalene Muscles…read more
Why a Normal MRI Report May Be an Increasingly Dangerous Thing…
We see patients every day who have normal MRI’s and pain and patients who have abnormal MRI’s and little pain. I’ve blogged about this extensively. Given that, for orthopedic imaging, a well-trained and observant physician can usually find more than the reading radiologist and also knows where to look, reading the MRI personally is a…read more
Our New C0–C1 Facet Injection Paper
This past decade, a big change has occurred in neck facet-joint treatment. The art of injecting something into a facet joint has become slowly extinct, while the procedures to perform nerve ablation of painful neck joints have ramped up. This has caused a real problem as newer regenerative-medicine techniques involving stem cells and platelet rich…read more Chronic Pelvic Pain Is in the Nerves and Changes the Brain
Patients in chronic pain have always had it rougher than patients with a disability you can see. If we see a patient who has lost a limb or can’t walk due to paralysis, we all understand that these patients are disabled. However, a patient who just has chronic pain has an invisible disability. That is,…read more Loose Ligamentum Teres? A New Injection May Help
The ligamentum teres, which lives in your hip, is the red-headed stepchild of ligaments. I say that because most doctors couldn’t tell you where it lives, and the ones who know it’s in the hip mostly ignore it. Yet this ligament is critical for hip stability in dancers, figure skaters, and other athletes who use…read more Hip Arthritis X-Ray Not Associated with Pain?
I love studies that question our belief systems in orthopedics, and this new one is a doozy. Several years ago, orthopedic guidelines shifted from requiring a knee or hip MRI to recommend a knee or hip replacement to just requiring X-rays. Now, a new study questions whether that’s a smart idea. Basically, it didn’t find an…read more What Is an Annular Tear?
Many patients don’t know that it’s possible to tear the disc in their neck and back. When this happens it’s called an annular tear. So let’s explore what happens. The annulus is the tough, fibrous outer covering of our spinal discs. The spinal discs live between each of the bones that make up our spine,…read more Are You a Candidate for Our Novel CCJ Instability Procedure?
This past year we were the first clinic in the world to begin offering a first-of-its-kind direct stem cell treatment for the alar, transverse, and accessory ligaments that make up the craniocervical junction, or CCJ. Given that the only other option that seems to work for these CCJ instability patients is a very, very invasive…read more 
