What X-Rays Show Us
Hello, Dr. Joe Singh here with Meridian Health Center. And the question is: Why do we take X-rays?
Well, just like we do a physical examination, take a consultation, and perform orthopedic and neurological tests, it’s very important for us to also take X-rays of your spine so we can determine exactly what’s causing your neck pain or maybe any other kind of discomfort going on within your spine.
The orthopedic tests, the history, and all that give us a lot of information. But what the X-ray shows us is things that we can’t see from those examinations.
The X-rays will show us exactly where the misalignment or condition may be coming from, how long it’s been there, can we fix it, and how long it’s going to take us to do that.
So, X-rays are very important because they give us as much information as possible to know how we can treat you better.
A Patient Who Had Neck Pain for 20 Years
I want to give you an example—or show you an example—of an X-ray we took of a patient just the other day. It was a patient who has had neck pain for 20 years, and no X-rays were ever taken of her.
She’s been to the medical doctor. She’s been to some physical therapists. She’s been to a lot of things to help get rid of the neck pain, and it’s just been progressively getting worse.
She now has some associated pain, such as headaches and tingling and numbness down her arms and hands.
So, when we X-rayed her, we were able to show her exactly where her neck pain was coming from and why it was coming from. So, let’s take a look at it real quick.
What Her X-Ray Revealed
As we look at her X-ray, we can see right here that—[unclear], there we go.
Looking at this region right here, you can see her atlas, the first bone in the neck. That first bone in the neck is jammed up with her skull, putting a lot of pressure on the brain stem.
She’s also getting some jamming down here at C2. But the thing that she didn’t know is that you can see C2 and C3 are fused together. So, here’s a congenital fusion that she has had, and no one was able to tell her that.
As we go further down the spine, she’s starting to get a lot of degeneration happening within the spine. The discs are starting to shrink, compressing on nerves and now causing increased neurological discomfort, with radiating pain down her arms and hands and even headaches.
When we showed her those X-rays, she was surprised that all that was going on and no one was able to look at it.
Getting a Clearer Picture
The reason it’s important for us to take X-rays is to see exactly what’s going on. Now we have a clearer picture of how to take care of her, and that’s what we want to do for every single patient who walks into our office.
X-rays are very important in your examination to determine exactly what’s going on, how long things have been there, can we fix them, and how long it’s going to take us.
I hope this video helps, and we look forward to seeing you if you have any neck pain to see how we can help you. Thanks for watching.
