Reflection: 14/11/19

Date: 14/11/19

Number of hours: 4

Location: Essential Chiropractic Torquay

Summary & Reflection:

Today I spent my time at placement shadowing the Chiropractor. I have always been interested in their work but decided that I had more interest in Sports Therapy when applying for University. I decided to shadow the Chiropractor to get an insight into how different their method of treatment was in comparison to Sports Therapists.

The Chiropractor at Eccessential Chiropractic sees a lot of patients suffering from Discogenic and facet joint problems. She starts every treatment with a quick soft tissue massage over the key areas which she will be treating to get rid of trigger points and address muscle tightness which could cause the treatment progress to be undone. The Chiropractor explained to me that if she does not treat muscle tightness as well as performing manipulations, then the muscles will just tighten more to pull the spine back out of alignment; I believe in a very holistic approach and that a single method of treatment is not always effective, so this made sense to me.

The Chiropractor checks for apparent leg length discrepancy by measuring from their naval to their medial malleolus (Sabharwal & Kumar, 2008), apparent leg length discrepancy can be caused by tightening of tissues around the hip and knee. She also measures their ASIS and PSIS to make sure they are level and that the patient isn’t suffering from anterior or posterior pelvic tilt which could be contributing to the back pain. If the ASIS is higher than the PSIS this indicates posterior pelvic tilt (PPT) and if the PSIS is higher than the ASIS then this indicates anterior pelvic tilt (APT). Following treatment rechecks their leg-length (if they were suffering from leg-length discrepancy before) to assess the effectiveness of the treatment.

I found it very interesting and useful to shadow the Chiropractor and feel I now have a good awareness of the importance of checking leg length discrepancy.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *