I had a patient come in for an evaluation.\u00a0 She was dissatisfied with her current chiropractor, who persuaded her to pay close to $3000 up front for 80 visits, “a year’s worth” of treatment in his office.\u00a0 (That will be discussed in a whole new blog — entitled “Why most people think Chiropractors are Quacks”)\u00a0 As I was examining her, she asked where I went to Chiropractic College, and I replied “Logan, in St. Louis.”\u00a0 She then told me that the other doctor told her that he went to Logan, but it’s a terrible school because it’s “too medical.”<\/p>\n
Let me explain this for those of you who aren’t intimately familiar with chiropractic.\u00a0 Some chiropractic colleges teach mostly “chiropractic philosophy,” and teach as little as possible about the human body, disease, and such.\u00a0 They don’t like research because that is too much like the “medical model” of health care.\u00a0 They don’t want to know how to do a full physical exam on a patient, because they don’t diagnose “medical problems,”\u00a0 they only diagnose “vertebral subluxations.”\u00a0 They don’t “treat back pain,” they only adjust the spine, and so on.<\/p>\n
Well, the truth is this.\u00a0 Most people who go to a chiropractor have some kind of back pain.\u00a0 And guess what . . . there are MANY different causes of back pain, not just vertebral subluxations.<\/p>\n
This week, a patient that I hadn’t seen in awhile came in with a new complaint.\u00a0 She had severe pain in her neck and right arm.\u00a0 I examined her.\u00a0 When I examine a patient, I do neurological, orthopedic, and chiropractic testing.\u00a0 With this patient, I didn’t even get to the chiropractic component of the exam because my neurological tests told me that this patient was dealing with something that I do not treat in my office, and that’s metastatic lung cancer.\u00a0 She had no reflexes in the right upper limb.\u00a0 Skin sensation was decreased in some parts of the limb, and increased in other parts.\u00a0 The slightest pressure placed on the lower neck was very painful.\u00a0 She was holding her right arm against her chest with her left arm because it was very weak.\u00a0 Her health history revealed a 40+ year history of smoking at least a pack per day.<\/p>\n
Almost immediately, I could hear Dr. Kettner, Dr. Geubert, Dr. Kuhn, Dr. Bub, Dr. Huber, Dr. Mannello, and others . . . their voices are permanently lodged in my head, reminding me of things to look for, what certain symptoms and signs might point to, other tests that may be applicable in helping to DIAGNOSE THE LESION!!\u00a0 This time I remembered Dr. Kettner and Dr. Geubert talking ad nauseum about Pancoast Syndrome, which is related to a metastatic tumor in the upper part of a lung.\u00a0 That was my diagnosis, and I sent her to the ER for immediate CT scans and bone scan.\u00a0 Sure enough, that was the correct diagnosis, (unfortunately, in this case).\u00a0 In fact, the ER doctor called me — she was impressed that I could diagnose that without ANY imaging, just history and physical exam.\u00a0 The patient called me from her hospital room a day later and thanked me for catching the tumor and sending her to the ER, because it gives her a chance to “get things in order”\u00a0 (unfortunately, the cancer had spread throughout her body, and she will probably not be with us for much longer).<\/p>\n
So, Logan is a GREAT school.\u00a0 They teach you all of the things you NEED TO KNOW so that your diagnostic skills will be on par with (and sometimes better than) the practitioners in main-stream medicine.\u00a0 Chiropractic philosophy is important too, but a DOCTOR of chiropractic has the responsibility of knowing when the problem is NOT just another vertebral subluxation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a patient come in for an evaluation.\u00a0 She was dissatisfied with her current chiropractor, who persuaded her to pay close to $3000 up front for 80 visits, “a year’s worth” of treatment in his office.\u00a0 (That will be discussed in a whole new blog — entitled “Why most people think Chiropractors are Quacks”)\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n