Little known effective alternative diagnostic methods and treatment of the musculoskeletal pain

Abstract

While examining a patient with complaints of musculoskeletal pain, a physician often fails to detect any objective pathological findings at the area of pain. Usually a doctor considers this complaint or as a result of inflammation, even if there is no clinical or laboratory confirmation of the inflammatory process, or makes a diagnosis of osteoarthritis. Based on our extensive medical (rheumatological), chiropractic experience, and literature data we found that in the majority of cases the musculoskeletal pain is not associated with inflammation, and is caused usually by slight misalignment of articular surfaces within joints. These misalignments are small and barely noticeable without special clinical or radiological analysis. We name them “microsubluxations” to distinguish them from the large subluxations typical for orthopedic or surgical cases.It was found that these microsubluxations could be responsible for a number of the clinical problems, where the medical treatment is limited, ineffective, or non-existent: 1. First of all, this is pain, sometimes strong enough to make the patient’s life very uncomfortable, and it usually brings a patient to a medical office. 2. Impairment of the function of a microsubluxated joint, and a decrease of its range of motion. 3. Automatic, often significant, weakness, of the muscles around the microsubluxated area. 4. Loss of articular surface congruency; that is one of the most important factors for the development and progression of degenerative processes both in the peripheral joints and the spine.