Video Transcription

What’s the role of MRI in diagnosing a pain problem? Typically MRIs should be used to get somebody ready for surgery. I mean that’s just being honest. I am just being honest. If you are going to get an MRI, are you willing if the MRI shows something needs to be surgically corrected are you ready to get surgery? And if the answer is “no” there is no reason, typically, to get an MRI. The vast majority of the time by your history and by your physical exam, the doctor like myself can tell you what’s wrong. The problems with MRIs is that they have a high false negative and a high false positive rate, meaning that two thirds of people that have an abnormality on an MRI they actually are functioning fine. In other words, in MRIs on people without pain two thirds of people have an abnormality on an MRI. The other problem is that with people that are in pain, about half of the MRIs show structures that are injured that are not really injured, or the MRIs are normal and they have pain. So, in other words just too many errors and false negatives and false positives on MRIs.

Personally, I don’t order a lot of them and often I will ask people why did you get that MRI? Are you ready to get surgery? For  instance, if you have pain in your lower back and the MRI shows an herniated disc and you are getting all this treatment for a herniated disc, when by your history and your physical exam the pain is not coming from an herniated disc. So, in other words, you are getting all this treatment done for a herniated disc and it’s not working because the herniated disc is not causing you pain. The pain is coming from your sacroiliac joints. That is just one example of hundreds and hundreds of examples. The worst case scenario is that people end up getting surgery for a herniated disc and the pain wasn’t from a herniated disc.

Ideally if you have pain and it is not resolving I would ask you to consider going to a doctor that does Prolotherapy, get a diagnosis that makes sense, and if the pain is coming from a structure that can be resolved with Prolotherapy, get Prolotherapy. Prolotherapy is very safe in my experience. It works very well. It specifically strengthens tissue. Most pain exists because there is a weakened tissue in the area. If you have shoulder pain right here, there some tissue right here that needs to be strengthened. That is why you have the pain. Prolotherapy, specifically at that area, can stimulate healing at that area. Then the area gets stronger and the pain is eliminated. Typically you don’t need MRIs with Prolotherapy and often you are well for good.