Why
do Chiropractic Doctors Take X-Rays?
The father brought his 16 year-old daughter to see me. Her horse had kicked her in the front of her pelvis, and she was in pain. There was no sign of fracture, but something told me to x-ray her low back and pelvis anyway. Her father agreed and we made the images. … It looked like a wad of tissue paper in the bone. The kick instantly became the least of the girl’s problems. The wad was a cancer, and I promptly referred the family to the hospital. They performed surgery the next morning and everything came out OK.
X-rays are not needed for everyone. When we do recommend them, it is for sound reasons.
One old saying went: “To see is to know. To not see is to guess.”
We have many tests to determine what might be wrong with a patient. We take x-rays when we have negative findings that suggest disc problems, vertebra that are misshapen or arthritic, or to measure a loss of the normal forward curve in your neck or low back. Of course, in a trauma case, x-rays help to find fractures and other damage. Sometimes, we suspect tumors.
X-rays give us the clearest picture of what is inside that we have at modest cost. They can make the difference between accurate and short treatment, and pretty good and longer treatment.
As for radiation, today’s film is 5x more sensitive than the film we used when I started in practice. A neck image is the about the same exposure to x-ray as 10 minutes of July sunshine. And, we can reduce the area to only the part we need to see. Tissue mere inches away gets next to nothing.
Answer to Pain: … Three simple steps…
1. Find where the irritated nerves are.
2. Determine exactly how and why they are affected (discover the
cause).
3. Correct the cause … No More PAIN!
