San Jose Chiropractor, A Chiropractic Blog

On April 4, 2017, the journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, a group of medical doctors, Amir Qaseem, MD, PhD, MHA; Timothy J. Wilt, MD, MPH; Robert M. McLean, MD; Mary Ann Forciea, MD, made a recommendation for the Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians regarding the treatment of low back pain which affects one quarter of the US.  The committee gave three recommendations as guidelines for typical low back pain. Two of the strongest recommendations involved therapies including chiropractic. This is based on systematic review of the evidence in an established peer-review journal based on a community of medical doctors who specialize in internal medicine for the American College of Physicians. Target Audience and Patient Population: The target audience for this guideline includes all clinicians, and the target patient population includes adults with acute, subacute, or chronic low back pain. Recommendation 1: Given that most patients with acute or...

    In this September's issue of ACAnews, Caitlin Lukacs discusses the rise of Instrument-Assisted Soft-Tissue Mobilization. Soft-tissue can be defined as any muscle, tendon, ligament, fascia and even fibrosis or scar tissue. Injuries or trauma can be defined with a single event sprained ankle to the repetitive stress injury or overuse injury such as tennis elbow.   “Tere’s almost always a soft-tissue component associated with any injury or condition,” says Travis McCathie, DC, ATC, director of the Northwestern Health Sciences University’s Center for Sports and Rehabilitation. It’s important to note that what gives IASTM the ability to reinitiate first-stage healing is that it is essentially reinjuring the body, although to a lesser degree, which may cause discomfort during the procedure and bruising afterward. “Patients may experience soreness in the treatment area for a day or two following IASTM,” explains Dr. Heller.   Soft-tissue mobili...

Chronic Exertional Compartment Syndrome    Chronic exertional compartment syndrome is a condition where exercise such as running causes numbness and tingling to the feet. It can be so severe and painful that the athlete cannot continue their exercises. Acute exertional compartment syndrome can be serious causing muscle necrosis (tissue death). This involves symptoms such as severe pain with lower leg swelling and muscle weakness that does not go away with a few minutes of rest. Go to the ER immediately, if you experience something similar to this. This patient is not an acute case but a stable chronic exertional compartment syndrome of the posterior compartment. It is a shame that I did not think to take pictures of the first week in which the feet were very pale or the skin was very white in color. Seeing such a big improvement in the second week, I had to make the patient stand and do 1 minute of calf raises to induce paleness in the skin. The nor...