What I mean by standardized evaluation procedures for a spinal injury, I mean that the evaluation procedure needs to be the same in any chiropractor’s office, in any physical therapy doctor’s office, in any medical provider’s office as a standard examination for the damage to the spin. The injuries are the same, the procedures for examination should be the same throughout all the professions. When we have that in the market, the market will dramatically change. Today, ligament injuries to the spine are the number one, fourth, and the sixth leading cause of chronic pain and disability.

The number one cause is problems with the lower back, number four is problems with the neck, and number six is problems with the neck leading to headaches. These problems are ligament injuries. However, the problem in the market is that the market is not aligned in its procedures. You could go into 10 different chiropractic offices with a spinal injury and come out with 10 different diagnoses, 10 different workups, and 10 completely different things identified. That’s a problem. There is no standardization and there is no codification in the market. That is extremely problematic. That is what is causing so much trouble in the market with patients not being able to get the care.

If a person injures their neck or injures their lower back, the number one diagnosis is a sprain. They sprained their lumbar spine. If you injured your leg and a patient actually walked out of a doctor’s office with the diagnosis of a sprained lower leg, lower extremity, a lower extremity sprain, there’s not a doctor in the world that wouldn’t wonder, “Okay, well where in the leg is the sprain?” A leg is a ligament condition and a ligament condition is only involved with joints. So, what joints in the leg are involved? Today when people come out with spinal sprain diagnoses, whether it’s from a medical doctor, a chiropractic doctor, a physical therapist, or an osteopath, they come out with the diagnosis of lumbar sprain or cervical sprain, but there is no location identified.

Which vertebral motion units are sprained and how bad is it?

A ligament injury to the spine causes spinal instability, and spinal instability is a clinical entity. When there is too much excessive motion in the spinal motion unit and it causes irritation of the nerve, it causes a motor sensory or a pain problem. That’s called a spinal instability. When the doctor who’s treating that spinal instability turns off the motor sensory or the pain problem, the spinal instability is reduced now to only an excessive motion problem that many times is benign, and the patient can manage successfully through home exercises or some form of ongoing routine care of some kind, oftentimes though they can manage it themselves. The bottom line is that that the patient could go into a hundred different doctor’s offices in the market today and that patient would get a different workup everywhere.

It’s time for us in the market to have standardized procedures.

With the Smart Injury Doctors program, we teach doctors. Smart Injury Doctors know how to do simple spinal ligament injury workups. These are the doctors that employers should be looking to use for injured workers. These are the doctors that insurance carriers should be looking for on treatment in auto injuries. Anytime that the patient has a ligament injury to the spine, anyone who’s in the market should be looking towards Smart Injury Doctors to do the following:

• accurately assess and diagnose the severity and location of that ligament injury
• be able to treat it with great levels of success

The sooner that doctor gets this type of patient, the better. They also should to be able to document with such simplicity exactly what is the problem with the patient and what are they doing for the patient. How are they responding to care? So, it’s the documentation that makes it easy for everyone in the market to understand exactly what the patient has and what they are going through. Today it’s easy to standardize. It would be so easy through medicine, chiropractic. If an injury patient goes into a chiropractor’s office in the United States, the injury workup should be the same. The injuries are the same, the workups should be the same. It’s time for the market to change and standardize its workup procedures. All we need to do is understand what these injuries are in the first place and that will lead to standardized workups. That will change and that’s what we’re doing as Smart Injury Doctors.

For more information on Spinal Ligament Injuries please check us out at http://www.smartinjurydoctor.comor check out our SmartInjuryDoctors® Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Stitcher.

For information on spinal ligament testing by board certified medical radiologists go to www.thespinalkinetics.com