Freeform Physical Therapy

There is a lot of clinical jargon below, but the gist of the study was: a patient with back pain underwent 10 MRIs in 3 weeks. Two of them showed a "bulged disc" in five different locations, while a third did not show any at all. Four of the MRIs showed "pinched nerves" while five others did not show any issues with nerves. Finally, not ONE of the MRI results correlated findings to symptoms.

Moral of the story: the spine is a mobile entity. Static evaluations (MRIs, x-rays) don't tell us anything about back pain. Movement needs to be evaluated to determine why back pain is occurring. Physical therapists are specialized providers in human movement and will help you to create better movement patterns to alleviate pain.

❓ How reliable is my MRI ❓
It has been said that a picture is worth 1,000 words. But what if the picture was an MRI and those words resulted in increased harm, medical overuse, and a cascade of events leading to more pain and disability.

Unfortunately, MRI’s have been a gold standard diagnostic tool for many orthopedic conditions. However, in this simple case study you can see the high variability and inconsistencies with one individual receiving 10 MRIs at 10 different testing sites.

MRIs are great at ruling out any significant and dangerous red flags such as tumors and fractures, but never justify the pain a person is experiencing.

An MRI is simply a small pixel in the grand picture of your life. Via