DOC TALK WITH DR. GIRLING AND DR. PALOMERA: DOES SMASA TREAT BACK PAIN?
DOC TALK is a series where our Sports Medicine Physicians discuss YOUR questions. Our patients and community ask questions then our group of physicians sit down to answer them. Have a question you want to submit? DM us on Facebook or Instagram!
BELOW DR. GIRLING AND DR. PALOMERA ANSWER:
DOES SMASA TREAT BACK PAIN?
Dr. Girling: Alright, Doc, I get this one a lot, I've got back pain, do y'all treat that?
Dr. Palomera: I get that one a lot, too. When it comes to spine pain, mostly low back, some neck, we actually have several doctors that treat it, especially our sports medicine or non-operative doctors treat it. I would tell you that of the three body parts that come in the most, the spine is top three easily and there's some days it's number one. Most of the treatments for the spine that we see, whether they're disc related, fracture related, or false stress fracture related have been going on for two to three weeks or longer. Most of it can be treated fairly well and fairly quickly in a conservative manner.
Yesterday, in fact, I saw a patient that was a little bit older that had fallen a few weeks ago and couldn't figure out why she had such bad pain. She actually had two fractures in her back but was very, very stable and was doing very well. We discussed a plan for management. We discussed how to use pain medicines now because she's not bad, but there's still something she does like a simple twist or turn that a hurt so we manage a lot of what we do. We manage it with an X ray in the office, an MRI if we need to, other scans if we need to, but typically MRI will give us a lot of answers. Almost everybody, and I would actually venture to say minus an injury like an acute fracture, everybody leaves with at least a rehab program to do at home, a physical therapy prescription to learn from a therapist how to do the rehab, or to be in rehab for a little while. That'll help a lot of it. For the longest time we’ve had a good network of spine surgeons that we refer to and we definitely will continue to use them, but we've been fortunate to hire Dr. Anderson. Dr. Anderson joined our group in February of this year of 2022. I think that adds to us to be able to, to have those conversations in house and keep in touch in house. There's some times that I will have a neck or a low back patient that involves spinal cord that may be surgical, and maybe not, it's a little bit in the gray, I can bounce questions off him. Not only is keeping it in house providing the same level of care to our patients, but we really want to be on the same page with next steps. Not rush into any surgery, but do surgery when it's indicated.
Dr. Girling: Yeah, I think it's important to close the loop for folks that come in because we see so many different types of injuries. For me as a hip and knee specialist, patients frequently don't know which one's hip pain and which ones back pain—and it's even hard for us to tell with an exam. As a general rule, in the front, kind of in the groin area, it’s almost always the actual hip joint, which is not what patients associated with that. Whenever it's on the back side there's a lot of crossover frequently that's actually coming from the back and I got to do a lot of things to kind of differentiate, alright, is that the back? Is that the hip? We'll do imaging, sometimes I'll do an injection not because I think it's going to fix the problem because it's diagnostic. It's like, hey, if we done the inside of the hip joint, it feels better. It was the hip, it doesn't feel better. It's the back, right. But now whenever those patients do have the back issues, it's great to have Dr. Anderson in the practice who can actually help facilitate from a surgical standpoint. If it needs intervention, once you've taken care of them from an easy non-operative side, most things respond very, very well so then it crosses that threshold, all right, we're looking at a surgery. Now we have someone in the practice that can help out in addition to all the resources we have in the entire area to take care of problems.
Dr. Palomera: One thing I noticed, that I wouldn't have picked up on before, is that having someone in house in all of its benefits includes, I can get you in quickly. You don't have to wait. Usually, we can get people in one to two weeks, now with Dr. Anderson on board it's even quicker than that so it's been real good. It's a real good addition and we look forward to continue working with him.
Dr. Girling: Very nice.