But my question is to the people that come in, that make up 80% of my evaluations and they say, “hey you know what my shoulder’s bothering me I don’t know what’s causing it or my knee’s been twicked and it’s bothering me when I go up and down the stairs and you know they have an X. Ray or they have an M.R.I. and the M.R.I. usually shows some kind of you know micro tear in the rotated cuff or meniscus tear in the knee but nothing else physically matches up with a meniscus tear, meaning if you never told the person that they had a meniscus tear nothing that they do functionally would even remotely show any orthopedist or myself that its a meniscus tear but the fact that there’s a meniscus tear that comes up on an M.R.I. all of a sudden now everybody thinks i have to go fix this meniscus tear because this meniscus must be causing my pain and what I’ve found over ten years of practice is that it’s rarely the case.
A lot of people come in I have an M.R.I. and the M.R.I. says that I have a torn meniscus and I see nothing physically about you shows that you have a torn meniscus. So if you want to go do surgery to just fix something that’s on an M.R.I. go ahead but that’s not what’s causing you pain. Usually what’s causing the pain is a muscular problem. I’m not seeing I’ve never had any patient that walk in here and they haven’t had a you know a meniscus tear and that’s what was causing their pain I’ve had it but it’s miniscule in the amount of percentage of people that have come through this door that it’s been yes an M.R.I. shows every meniscus tear but the pain has nothing to do with that meniscus tear. Or an M.R.I. shows they have an herniated disc are in L1 L2 and there’s no pain down the legs, there is no symptoms into the groaning on the thighs and there’s nothing to do with what’s causing the pain.. And usually again in the lower back it’s caused by something going on in muscle.
so just because you have something that comes up on an M.R.I. or an X. Ray does not mean that it need to be corrected right away unless it’s life threatening, listen to your doctor you make your own decision. I am not going to tell you never have surgery, okay. That’s no what am here for, I’m just saying if you have the option and you ask your doctor, “do I have the option to try something lesser invasive or do I need to have the surgery right now today?” If they say, “oh you can try something less invasive” then try Physical Therapy.
All right, I can get you out in a lot less sessions before you have surgery compared to after you get surgery, all right. Am just using numbers here, I may be able to get some of the pain free and without any kind of physical limitations in eight to ten sessions if they never had surgery. If they have surgery it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than ten sessions.
So just remember that, all right. it’s not that I’m trying to have you come to physical therapy and not have surgery, I’m actually trying to have you save on Physical Therapy visit by not having surgery. And that’s the best way to do it. If you have the time and you have you know the option to do Physical Therapy which I don’t see why you wouldn’t, come to Physical Therapy, we can find out the true source of your pain which again is usually muscular and we can help stay out of that operating room.
You still have a meniscus tear, you still have a herniated disk but it won’t be impeding your function and it won’t bother you at all because nobody is perfect. You take an M.R.I. of anybody you going to find something wrong, it doesn’t mean we have to go under the knife and get everything fixed. All right, there are many risk factors to surgery, I think we can all agree on that.
So, if you have any questions and you want to talk about any kind of discomfort that you having, give us a call, look us up pklpt.com
PKL Physical Therapy has offices in Amityville and Bethpage Long Island, New York.