What to expect when you visit us with Neck Pain
This post is for anyone with neck pain wondering what to expect as part of your initial assessment with us at Align.
Neck pain is one of the most common issues people will come to visit us for. We are chiropractors after all.
The goal of your first visit with us is to determine not only the likely cause of your neck pain, but the best course of action moving forward for you as well.
If you have been watching the other videos about initial visits that we have posted recently, you will notice there is a certain level of commonality between the different assessments.
This is by design.
The video outlines the common elements to our cervical assessment.
We want our examination process to be accessible to people with various levels of pain, injury or disability, and at the same time give us enough scope to individualise our assessment on an individual basis.
There is a transcript of the video below. Although why WOULDN'T you want to see it filmed live?
Hi, Martin from Align Chiropractic and Kieran...also from Align Chiropractic. This video is just going to give you a little bit of an idea of what to expect if you're coming to see us and you're concerned with having neck pain.
The first thing we're going to do, Kieran if you’ll pretend that you’re the person with neck pain is make sure that you get to tell me all that you need to tell me about your neck pain.
Certainly I have some questions about when it started, what makes it better, what makes it worse etc, and for a lot of people it's really important for us to understand what is it that their neck pain is making it harder for them to do, or stopping them from doing that they need to get back to.
It’s really important that you get to tell all about neck pain so that we know what's going on.
Step two: Palpation
When we're assessing somebody who's come to see us with neck pain is a palpatory exam. A plapatory exam is where we use gentle pressure to assess what is happening in your neck, are there areas where the joints are restricted in their ability to move? Are there areas where there's tenderness or discomfort? Are there areas where there's increased muscle tension?
Once we've assessed the neck, often, because the spine is one
integrated system it's all part of one whole system, we extend our palpatory examination through the rest of the spine.
Sometimes we will also assess other related areas such as your shoulders or your jaw.
Step 3: Show us your moves
When we are assessing somebody who's come to see us with neck pain is to assess how they bend, move and twist.
Often when you have neck issues that will affect how far you can go one way compared to the other. The way we measure that is we use inclinometry, which is where we use an accurate measuring tool to see how far you can bend to the left comfortably and then compare the left side to how far you can move to the right. Simple as that.
Step 4: Assess Alignment
When we're assessing somebody who's come to see us complaining of neck pain is that we have a look to see if there’s any alteration in alignment of their spine.
The way that we do this is we can use specialised software to take a photo of the person and then digitising that photo to see if there’s any misalignment or alteration in their posture.
The software works by taking a photo and it uses the iPad to make sure that we have a photo that is absolutely vertical.
The software then places our grid around exactly where straight up and down is and then we can compare landmarks on your body to measure against.
Your body's landmarks should also be aligned so we can then see exactly how straight up and down or symmetrical your posture is.
Neck Pain
Neck pain is a common condition that most of us will suffer from at some point in our lives.
It can arise for a whole host of reasons but if you have ever suffered from neck pain, you know that even mild neck pain can feel like it is taking over your life! It can make it harder for you to sleep, work, exercise and enjoy time with your friends and family.
The most common causes of neck pain are day to day movements and postural stresses and neck pain is rarely the sign of a more serious condition.
In case you aren't sure where neck pain is, here is a stock photo to indicate what a pain in the neck neck pain is. In this instance, pain is indicated by redness.
Neck pain can often refer to areas such as your shoulders, arms and upper back, as well as being a cause of headaches.
Common causes of neck pain include:
- Poor posture (the way your body is positioned when standing or sitting)
- Sleeping in an awkward position.
- Upper back and neck muscle tension.
- Injury such as a muscle strain.
- Whiplash.
- Prolonged sitting, especially when using a desktop or laptop computer.
- Arthritis.
- Degenerative changes in bones of the neck as a part of the ageing process or previous injury.
You will notice a common theme to the list above and that is; all of them appear relatively trivial when compared to the impact that neck pain has on our lives.
In fact, for a lot of our clients suffering from neck pain, that adds to the frustration. It doesn't matter if the pain is mild or severe, recent or decades old, most frequently, our clients will say that it just doesn't add up. “Why they are in so much discomfort? Why won’t the pain just go away by itself? Why does it keep coming back?”
How can something so mundane cause so much pain?
In these situations it is highly likely that there is an underlying imbalance of function that meant that their body was ‘on edge’. There was a build up of tension in an area of their spine and that mundane event was just the straw that broke the camels back (for the want of a better term).
Does it make sense to you that if your spine is functioning well that a trivial stress would be enough to make your neck hurt? If your range of motion was symmetrical, your muscles, ligaments and tendons were relaxed, elastic and strong does it make sense that it would suddenly start to hurt you?
Of course it doesn’t.
An underlying imbalance of function is most likely why you notice neck pain that comes out of no where, or won’t calm down, or keeps coming back.
This is why our initial assessment of someone with neck pain looks for two things:
- What is the cause pain and how do we get it to calm down as quickly as possible?
- Is there an underlying imbalance and if so, what can you do to address it to minimise the chances of it coming back?
There are also more serious causes of neck pain that, although much more rare, we need to screen for.
The more serious causes of neck pain are issues like fracture, disc prolapse compressing on nerves, cancer or meningitis.
We have designed our assessment to be able to determine if your neck pain arises from an issue that we can start to address immediately, requires referring for further testing (such as X-rays or MRI etc.) or if you require immediate referral for medical assessment.
So how do I know if I need to see you or go to the Emergency Department?
If you are experiencing intense neck pain after a severe head or neck injury, have lost vision due to an accident, are having difficulty swallowing, have lost or severely altered bowel and/or bladder function or your neck pain is linked to intense fever, we advise that you visit your ED as soon as is possible to make sure that you aren’t suffering from more serious conditions.
If you have any questions or concerns about neck pain, please do not hesitate to get in contact with us at Align.