What to expect when you visit us with Back Pain

This post is for anyone who has back pain and wants to know what to expect if they were to come and see us at Align.

Lets face it...as chiropractors, back pain really is our thing. You might have already guessed but along with neck pain and headaches, back pain makes up a large number of the people who come to visit us initially.

Unsurprisingly therefore, it is important for us to be able to efficiently find out what is happening in these cases and be able to determine their best course of action to move forward. 

The video below outlines very generally what to expect when you first come to see us. 

I use the term 'generally' as obviously, each person is different and so are their injuries, so we treat every client individually depending on their presentation. 

Sometimes back pain sufferers might require a neurological examination, for others we might require X-rays and for some, we may not be the first place they should be at all! 

We take pride in our initial examination's ability to individually assess back pain sufferers quickly and effectively to determine their needs and best course of action.

This video outlines the common elements of our exam.

For those who don't enjoy seeing Martin run an assessment on the Best Looking Chiropractor in Melbourne*, there is a transcript beneath the clip. 

*Not a real competition or title.

Hi, Martin and Kieran from Align Chiropractic and this is a short video to tell you what to expect if you're going to come and see us because you are concerned about back pain.

Step one: History

To be begin, we need for you to tell us all about your back pain; 

-what have you been feeling? 

-what makes it better? 

-when did it start? 

-what makes it worse? 

However mostly we want to understand is; what does the pain mean to you? 

For a lot of people, the pain is only a part of the problem. 

A big part of it is the impact that it's having on your life. What are the things that the pain is stopping you from doing that you love to do or need to do in your life? 

Step one then is for us to get a really good understanding all the ramifications.

Step two: Palpation

Next when you come to see us complaining of back pain, is a palpatory assessment. What we’re looking for with that assessment are areas where the joints are restricted in the motion.

When they are out of balance, they are not able to move the same left and right. 

We also want to see if there are areas where there's increased muscle tension and/or the presence of tenderness.

We are looking for the areas where things are just not working how they should. 

Once we've done that palpatory assessment of the area that is giving you problems, we will often also extend the examination beyond that area of pain because your spine is linked with the way the whole body works and so we will often then extend up into assessing how your neck is working or in other related areas.

Step Three: Assess Alignment

the next step when we are assessing somebody who has come to see us with back pain is we assess the alignment of their spine.

Posture is the window for us to be able to assess alignment.

To do this, we use specialised software where we can take a photo from the side and from the front. 

We then digitise those photos and then analyse them to see if there are indications of misalignment in the spine.

The way the software works is that we first take a photo and it uses the iPad to make sure that we have a photo that is absolutely vertical. 

The software then places a grid around exactly where straight up and down is and then we can compare landmarks on you that should also be aligned to see exactly how straight up and down or symmetrical your posture is.