Sacroiliac Joint Pain Clinic

https://youtu.be/YI20ll76uu8

Sacroiliac joint treatment options What determines sacroiliac joint pain treatment? Western medicine options are limited and poor in diagnostics and many are having unecessary surgery. If you ...

Good news, I have found someone who wants to take over the Atlas Pain Relief Centre business.

Satveer Kang, an osteopath who previously worked at Atlas, has agreed to take on the staff and goodwill of the company and continue to provide a valuable service to our customers.

More details to follow as soon as we have concrete news of opening dates.

After much deliberation a decision has been made to not reopen our doors for business when lockdown is over.

This means effectively that Atlas Pain Relief Centre clinics will be closing.

Atlas has been trading for 20 years in Tamworth, Solihull and more recently in Atherstone but with retirement of both the principle John Williams and Cherry Richards there was nobody else prepared to take over the running of the business.

The expected restrictions that will no doubt be applied to working clinics in the future will make it difficult to practice our trade and drastically reduce the amount of patients we can see.

We can only thank the loyal customers old and new for supporting us over the years and hope you find suitable support elsewhere. We are proud of the quality service we have provided to the community and hope you can find the same service from others.

We have made many friends over the years and we hope that continues moving forward.

Best wishes, stay safe and enjoy the sunshine. jw

For those of you that have not seen comments of mine about MRI imaging on low back.

If you have sciatic nerve type symptoms into your low leg or foot, you have sciatica.

If you have had a scan that says your low back is fine then the 2 do not match.

Either you are making up the symptoms or you do have a problem that the scan did not identify. Obviously if your pain is real then the report is lacking.

An MRI is a static image and they are generally looking for something mechanical as a cause. In the case of sciatica it will be a bulging disc pressing on the nerve or foraminal or canal stenosis impinging the nerve

If none of this is seen you will likely be told your low back scan was ok and nothing found.

Now importantly NOTHING FOUND means they didnt see anything, it does not mean your low back is ok!

Nerve root irritation can come from a chemical source not showing on a scan. Enzymes released from a damaged disc that is not pressing on your nerve can cause similar symptoms.

Your scanner can be poor quality ( needs to be minimum 1.5 Tesla) or your radiologist was inexperienced or having a bad day.

It could be worse, your scan was arranged for you by a consultant who is generally a surgeon and he did the report on the images himself. Firstly he will not be as good as an independent radiologist and secondly he will only be interested in looking for something he can do surgery on, so will not pay attention to other factors that could be causing you pain.

If it looks like a dog, sounds like a dog and behaves like a dog- it is a dog!

If you have sciatic symptoms, you have sciatica no matter what the scan says!!

SIJ patients travelled from Lincolnshire, Scotland, Wales, London, Nottingham and Leeds in the last few weeks for a diagnosis and answers.

See why we attract patients from far away who cannot get a solution to their problems. It is often because they were being treated for the wrong condition.

Diagnosis is Key !

Another victim of SIJ surgery contacted me today asking for help.

Please ask for help before surgery not afterwards and lets expose this scandal that a steroid injection into the SIJ that gives some temporary relief is a green light for fusing the pelvis.

What kind of world are we living in that allows consultants and surgeons to suggest this major surgery on the basis of a very weak diagnosis protocol.

Anyone considering SIJ surgery or fusion should not listen to the pro surgery crew who are destined to a lifetime of problems after their procedure.

This is just plain wrong, dont do it!

Sacroiliac Joint Pain and SIJD are often diagnosed in error without first ruling out other causes of similar symptoms.

Lumbar Spine Degenerative Disc Disease, hip and Maigne’s Syndrome can all mimic SIJ pain

Pain is often located in the affected tissues and can be identified more easily than referred pain.

Referred pain means the pain is real but the problem is in another location.

Maigne’s syndrome is a problem with the T12 and L1 vertebral level and may need attention. It can refer pain into the SIJ area, glutes, groin and lateral thigh.

This can also be described as Thoracolumbar junction syndrome and might require a spinal segment manipulation between T10-L2 to ensure that all segments and facet joints are moving freely.

For clinicians please perform your orthopaedic tests and ask the correct questions during the case history taking.

Do not assume that all one sided low back pain combined with groin pain is an SIJ problem.

We are looking for staff, if you are an osteopath, chiropractor or physiotherapist and want to upgrade your skills and work in a modern purpose built clinic in North Warwickshire please send your CV to [email protected]

SIJD the meaningless diagnosis

What does it mean?
What is a dysfunction of the sacroiliac joint?

Well I am now in Australia for a month. If I can help anyone from “down under” let me know.

Currently in Sydney and will visit Brisbane and Melbourne.

Happy holidays everyone 🙏

jw

Our SIJ treatment works!

Another nice testimonial from a patient.

‘I’ve just finished a 4 week treatment with Peter at Atlas Solihull, and cannot recommend them highly enough. Having been referred to the hip consultant for a prospective replacement 6 weeks ago, X-ray and MRI showed nothing so was recommended cortisone injection into my hip joint to see if it would help. I decided, as this was a somewhat invasive form of process of elimination, to seek a second opinion and was recommended to visit Atlas. So, 4 weeks later, having been diagnosed with an inflamed sacroiliac joint by Peter, I am pain free and have more unhindered movement than I have for nearly 12 months. Now feeling none of my 54 years - thanks Atlas!’

Thanks very much to Peter

best wishes - Caroline

For those who are looking for exercises to mobilise the SIJ and work muscles that indirectly affect its movement then try these.



https://youtu.be/jz4dDv1nqyk

3 SI Joint Stretches For Proper Sacroiliac Motion Got back problems you can’t quite trace down? Have pains in the butt that you haven’t been able to figure out? Problems in your SI joint might be the culprit...

Lets look at what process you should be following when you are faced with a diagnosis of sacroiliac joint pain or SIJD

Firstly this is often misdiagnosed so you may not have this condition.

Before you put forward an SIJ diagnosis you need to follow a proper diagnostic protocol.

Case history - involving any trauma, previous surgery, inflammatory disease, accurate description and location of symptoms and finally aggravating and relieving factors.

A practitioner would consider any scans or blood tests that may have been done and then the most important thing is clinical examination.

You need to examine the lumbar spine, its movement and if it generates pain.

You need to examine hips as degenerative hips or labral tears can reproduce symptoms similar to SIJ.

So many things make up a diagnosis and you have to trust expert examination to get answers.

If you have neurological symptoms down your leg especially past the knee into the calf or foot it is unlikely to be SIJ.

Do a seated slump test to determine if you have any nerve root tethering. This will determine if you have sciatica.

Note - just because you have one sided low back pain over your pin bone (PSIS) does not mean the SIJ is responsible!

Too many people are wrongly diagnosing SIJ by location of pain.

You have to eliminate lumbar spine and hip by imaging and examination before considering SIJ.

Next you need to assess radiology report thoroughly as I have seen them to be misleading. 1.5 Tesla minimum strength required for accurate imaging. Remember a report that states a disc bulge that is resting up against but not compressing the nerve can be your pain generator.

MRI scans are taken laying down and the picture would change if standing up and putting weight through the spine.

Hip MRI scans can often miss labral tears so I suggest an Arthrogram to look specifically for labral tears. You will need an experienced athrogram radiologist to do the report on it too as some radiologists are not experienced with arthrograms

Now considering that most of you reading this will probably have undergone tales of misalignment from chiropractors, weak core muscles from physiotherapists and my personal favourite hypermobility problems requiring SI belt or prolotherapy injections to tighten ligaments.

They all suggest they know what it is and have the answer when in fact you are well out of pocket years later and still have the problem. The reason many have the problem for years is that you have been misdiagnosed and been given treatment that is not appropriate, often making it worse.

A true SIJ problem tends to have common symptoms. Sitting and getting up from sitting is painful, turning over in bed or swinging your legs in and out of the car.

Trying to put on your pants or socks or washing your feet in the shower are all classic. Sometimes groin and testicle pain in men

The answer is in the examination and diagnosis followed by appropriate treatment.
Many of you are not getting this sadly 🙁

More video’s coming soon. We are going to go through a systematic approach to diagnosing the SIJ

This may be useful for practitioners but more importantly it will enlighten the patients and encourage them to ask questions and challenge a diagnosis.

You will have a solid insight on how things should be done which will enable you to make a more informed choice.

Its very concerning that ifuse are recruiting and training more surgeons to carry out fixation procedures on the sacroiliac joint.

This comes about from a problem that is virtually impossible to diagnose the pain generator and weak diagnostic skills that precede the surgery.

MRI scan show nothing, blood tests show no inflammatory markers yet they carry out fixation surgery based on a anaesthetic injection into the SI Joint that relieves symptoms.

This is crazy and I can only think this has to be financially driven.

Please do not fall for this as your quality of life is likely to be compromised.

An interesting article highlighting referred pain patterns

http://drmorgan.info/clinicians-corner/maigne-s-syndrome/

Maigne's Syndrome - Dr. William E. Morgan This is the website for William E. Morgan, DC. It is dedicated to providing clinic resources to other spine specialists seeking clinical mastery.

Posterior Rami Syndrome is another Differential Diagnosis when looking at patients presenting with SIJ symptoms.

The symptoms are similar to SIJ or SIJD in their presentation so should be investigated as a possible cause.

Check it out!

On the subject of physiotherapy exercises given out by health care practitioners. It may be a doctor, physiotherapist or other medical staff.

Muscles are designed to contract and thus shorten. In most cases this is designed to move a bone and create movement at a joint.

Muscles are elastic in nature and can also stretch but this is generally a passive movement or recoil in nature.

Lets look at why you are given exercises by a physiotherapist?

Lets imagine you have knee pain and you visit your physio. Firstly what should happen is an examination followed by a diagnosis should be the expected outcome.

In an ideal world you would then receive treatment for the problem with possible exercises that are designed to help.

This is the interesting bit!
A knee is a hinge joint, it bends and straightens again, so if it functions ok and performs this action fully, there is no function problems.

Exercises may be needed to strengthen weak muscles, in the case that if you bend down and then need your arms to help you get back up again. This would probably demonstrate a muscle weakness.

Its this strengthening of muscles that concerns me.

To strengthen a muscle you need to overload it in a low rep range. Some of the rubbish exercises given for knees involve lifting just the limb against gravity. If you can perform 15 reps of an exercise, it is not a strength exercise, but an endurance exercise and no strengthening will take place.

Mobility exercises are different they are just exercises than encourage movement of the joint but you will not strengthen.

Many physio’s give generic exercises for a specific body part or joint with no attention to what specific function they are trying to achieve.

So to recap. If you want to strengthen a muscle. Reps below 6 with high resistance that will cause the failure to achieve 7 reps. Repeat 5 times with recovery periods between each set of reps. (5 x 4 reps to failure)

Try and use functional exercises such as squatting down and standing back up without arms. Add weight if its too easy to achieve failure at the required rep range.

Most people I see on physio rehab are not doing exercises fit for purpose mainly because the therapist is ignorant or they failed to clarify what was required.

After discussing Radiology reports with 2 experienced radiologists this week I feel I need to share some information.

If you are considering an MRI scan, ask what strength of magnet the scanner has. Minimum wants to be 1.5 and anything less will not give you the detail required for an accurate scan report.

Anyone who has scans already done that shows nothing significant needs to review the magnet strength of the scanner if they have unexplained symptoms.

This is really important as too many practitioner put too much emphasis on scan reports that can be wrong.

We are installing a new website at Atlas Pain Relief and have commissioned a video clip of some of our treatments that we offer.

Our sacroiliac joint treatment may include some of these depending what you present with when you walk through the door.

As its less than 3 minutes we cannot include specific protocols but instead a snapshot of things we offer

Feedback appreciated on the video please?

https://youtu.be/0rR1lVVgEQI

Atlas Pain Relief Centre Atlas Sizzle Rell 2017 by Salmon Crest Pictures

Busy couple of weeks when I get back off holiday treating long distance visitors looking for help with sacroiliac joints

When I get back off holiday next week I will be treating visitors looking for answers and seeking insight into sacroiliac joint pain. Visitors from Wales, Manchester, Henley on Thames, Worcester, Shrewsbury, Hertfordshire and 3 from the USA have booked appointments and I hope to enlighten them with a diagnosis, plan of action and to help them move forward.

and are terms used a lot with pelvic pain that can have many causes. Often simple things are overlooked, mistakes are made and the patient suffers as a result.

A one off visit for answers and some direction is a cost effective exercise rather than tour round lots of therapists being told different things and spending lots of money with no improvement.

www.sacroiliacjointpain.co.uk

As we have discussed previously, diagnosis is key if you suspect you may have sacroiliac joint pain.

Let me try and help out here. What I have discovered is that 3 potential problems can all give overlapping symptoms and present as pain in the sacroiliac joint area.

I call these "the three amigo's"

All 3 have to be considered as a potential cause of your pain.

The 3 Amigo's are lumbar spine, hip joint and sacroiliac joint.

Symptoms can include one sided low back pain, groin pain, buttock pain, pain in upper thigh and pain when getting up from sitting.

You can have other symptoms such as pain walking or sitting and turning in bed. Struggle to put on socks or shoes and much more.

Radiology scans are helpful but please remember there are sometimes mistakes with these scans so do not trust them 100%. Your clinical findings are more important.

In the last 2 weeks I had a lady from Peterborough visit me and my clinical findings suggested a hip problem. She showed me a report on a private hip arthrogram ( the gold standard scan for hips) that said nothing was found.

Trusting my clinical skills, I obtained a second opinion on the hip scan and found a labral tear that was missed.

Scans can be helpful but let us see what is best scan for our 3 Amigo's

Lumbar spine needs an MRI scan as we need to view soft tissue structures.

Hip joint needs an arthrogram (MRI with contrast dye) as it helps identify a labral tear

Sacroiliac Joint is unlikely to show anything so generally I would not scan this area. You may see severe inflammation on both hips or sclerotic changes in the joints in severe cases but most people will not need to scan this area.

Importantly where practitioners make a mistake is they fail to consider that the patient may have 2 or even 3 of the Amigo's at the same time.

As their training involves a set of symptoms for each condition, confusion occurs when 2 conditions present at the same time.

You therefore need to use your clinical skills to try and isolate which of the 3 Amigo's your patient may have.

Test hip and low back first, look at scan results and try and match symptoms to scan findings. If you clear the hip and lumbar spine then you may have an SIJ problem.

Unfortunately the standard treatment offered of manipulation/realignment, injections or exercise prescription does not seem to work so you may have to visit us for a different approach.

If you do have SIJ pain there may be a cause (often not obvious) that you need to address however many have symptoms without a cause and we would then need to treat the pain.

We have electrotherapy modules used in a non standard frequency range that is effective and together with a supporting cryotherapy home regime the patients respond quickly.

Please share this as this can help therapists who struggle with this subject.

www.sacroiliacjointpain.co.uk

Sacroiliac Joint Pain Specialist in UK for SIJD Sacroiliac Joint Pain Specialist in UK Sacroiliac Joint Expert has unique treatment for SIJ pain and SIJD, sacroiliac joint dysfunction.

The more I hear and see about SIJD and sacroiliac joint pain being used as a diagnosis after patients have spent fortunes on other treatments, the more I despair.

Often the process is like this, you get pain symptoms that can vary in intensity. You may see your GP or doctor who prescribes pain meds or anti inflammatory drugs.

This may not work so you seek private help from a physio, chiropractor or osteopath who tells you weak core, hypermobile or sticking joint or misaligned vertebrae.

Many treatments later you are no better and seek a scan or referral to orthopaedic consultant. Injections prolotherapy, steroids, anaesthetic diagnostic injections into the SIJ.

If the scan shows disc prolapse you may be persuaded to have surgery.

Following surgery you may feel improved but after a few months the pain returns and this is when the SIJD or SIJ suddenly becomes the apparent cause of your problem.

The fun then begins trying to find a cure with everyone offering help that ends up both expensive and mostly not effective.

This is where we come in. We unravel the mess and hopefully tell you what is wrong and offer advice or treatment that is effective.

Often the surgery has created a long term problem and successful outcomes are limited.

If possible avoid this by avoiding surgery unless absolutely necessary

Testimonial from happy customer Philip Simpson today.

I received a back injury over 30 years ago. After countless visits to the GP over the years, being signed off, taking pain killers till I rattled, which only masked the pain, my GP got me some physiotherapy. After a couple of sessions Physio said that I had a chronic back problem & there was little she could do. I soldiered on for years knowing each day was going to be painfull, the only unknown was how painful. A fortnight ago I went to see Peter Taylor at Atlas in Tamworth after being recommended. I had a consultation & treatment followed by 2 more treatments. After one of the treatments I was in agony but I stuck with it. I did my exercises, iced afterwards. After 3 treatments I woke up the following day & my back was still tight but I had no pain. This was the first day in 30 years that I was pain free! I went for my 4th treatment today & Peter asked how I'd been & I must say I was quite emotional because 30 years of pain had gone. I will be going back in a week for another session & probably have follow up treatment every so often but I cannot recommend Peter strongly enough.
I have nothing to gain by posting this. I am not related to Peter or have any connection to Atlas except for being a patient. I was very sceptical specially as I'd been told by a 'health professional' that my condition was chronic & untreatable but I urge anyone with strong back/pelvic/sciatic pain, which is what I had, to seek help from Atlas. I feel I wasted 30 years of my life being given bad & wrong advice & suffering years of pain. In 3-4 sessions with Peter my pain was gone. I will probably need to go back occasionally for 'maintenance' but that doesn't matter.

If you have back pain issues, don't think like I did that you just have to learn to live with it, you don't, call them for an appointment & set the ball in motion & seek treatment!!

Tel. 01827 59943



www.atlaspainrelief.co.uk

Tamworth osteopath, physiotherapist or acupuncture for back pain relief Tamworth Back Pain? Atlas have a Tamworth osteopath, physiotherapists and acupuncture. Alternative treatments to a Tamworth chiropractor at our Pain Relief Centre

Hip pain can often be misdiagnosed by GP's and practitioners alike. Common errors are diagnosing sacroiliac joint dysfunction, groin strain, piriformis syndrome and hip bursitis.

Indeed physiotherapists will often suggest tight muscles or a weak core.

Hip fractures can easily be missed and should be considered if the patient is over 50, is female or there is a history of trauma. Of course there are other groups that are at risk of hip fracture too.

First listen to the patient and take details of type of pain, aggravating and relieving factors and location of pain.

Examination should include passive range of movement test compared with other side and apply compression forces to try and reproduce the pain. As the hip joint is a part of the ilia then you will get sacroiliac joint movement when testing the hip so knowledge of the differential outcomes when testing is vital because mixing up the SIJ and hip are common mistakes.

Radiology examination should be employed if you suspect hip joint involvement because degenerative changes or fracture can be present and responsible as the hip pain generator.

We had a patient this week diagnosed by her GP with hip bursitis and she was referred for an injection into the bursa. We decided it was far more serious and arranged an MRI scan that revealed a subcapital fracture of the femur. She was then sent directly to Casualty Dept at local hospital.

We specialise in sacroiliac joint pain so see plenty of misdiagnosed hip problems.

Visit the experts at Atlas Pain Relief Centre

www.sacroiliacjointpain.co.uk

Sacroiliac joint pain affects all ages. Another success on a young lad who was treated by Suzie at our Atherstone clinic

"My son had a back injury at school four years ago which was diagnosed as a soft tissue injury. The pain continued to affect him and gradually worsened until we returned to the gp last September. He referred us for an MRI scan and expected us to receive physiotherapy. When we saw the NHS Physio she looked at the scan results, examined him and said there was nothing wrong and there was no need for treatment. Meanwhile, my son had to sit out of PE, cut short swimming lessons and generally suffer pain.
We called into Atlas in Atherstone and made an appointment with Suzie. She discovered that the problem was inflammation in the sacroiliac joint and scar tissue around a healed fracture! Treatment involved a "TENS" machine and ultrasound with an ice therapy regime to do at home. After just 6 treatments (3 weeks) he is now pain free.
The sessions were friendly and professional and, although only 12 years old, my son was quite happy to go along. Suzie is lovely and put him totally at ease.
Thanks go to Suzie and Atlas for a job well done. Can't recommend highly enough"

Charles Hill - Atherstone

Visitors from London, Edinburgh, Bristol, Grimsby, Carlisle and Stratford on Avon in the last few days.

Sacroiliac joint specialists are in demand and that is why they travel to us for answers after years of failed treatment they need help from the experts and access to the Atlas Sacroiliac Joint Treatments