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The Critical Need for a Diagnostic Based Pain Assessment for Chronic Pain Management with Medical Massage Therapy

Author: Stephen Akamne

Why do I need a Diagnostic Based Pain Assessment for treating Chronic Pain with Medical Massage? Diagnostic Testing, when combined with Medical Massage Therapy, as part of a Comprehensive Pain Assessment, can be a highly effective tool for Chronic Pain Management.

Can Medical Massage treat Chronic Pain effectively without a Diagnostic Based Pain Assessment? Without a Diagnostic Testing based Pain Assessment, the Massage Therapist can only guess and make assumptions at what the appropriate Chronic Pain Treatment Plan for a patient should be.

How is a Diagnosis different from a Pain Assessment? A Diagnosis is not the same thing as a Pain Assessment. A diagnosis is made by a Doctor to specifically identify an illness, disease, or medical condition. Diagnostic Testing is used for a Diagnostic Pain Assessment in order to compile information that is gathered and evaluated in order to derive an appropriate plan of treatment.

Are there different types of Pain Assessments for different parts of the body? Different types of Pain Assessments are used for different parts of the body. The diagnostics testing for Lower Back Pain is not the same as the Diagnostics Testing for Shoulder Pain or Elbow Pain, but the Diagnostics Testing for Fibromyalgia may use the same Diagnostic Tests that were used for Lower Back Pain or Shoulder Pain or Elbow Pain.

What kind of Information is used in the Pain Assessment? The assessment information that is used to develop a treatment plan includes the patient’s Pain Scale, their Medical History, an objective observation of symptoms, biomechanical (analysis of posture, and body locomotion) diagnostic testing, and palpation (analyzing soft tissue by feel).

What is the significance of a Pain Scale? The patient is given pictures of the human body and is asked to list the specific pain levels on the pictures that give the representation of the patients pain, as part of the assessment. The amount of pain that a person is experiencing in a specific part of the persons body on a scale of 0 to 10 defines the Pain Scale. Zero is no pain, and 10 is unbearable pain. 1-4= functional, 5-7=extreme discomfort and difficulty with functionality, 8-9=pain so great that the person is bed-ridden.

How does Medical History affect the Pain Assessment? The historical factors effecting a person’s pain, such as the medications that the person is taking, the time of day when the pain is at its worst, what forms of treatment has helped the patient, and what forms of treatment have not helped the patient, helps the health practitioner to better understand the root cause of a patient’s pain.

Why is Observation an important part of the Assessment? Postural Analysis is an important part of the observation of a patients symptoms, because it helps to determine if a patient has good posture or bad posture as a possible source of their pain and will help to improve posture where improvement can be made. A Gait Analysis can reveal a limp or favoritism of a limb. The observation of an externally rotated foot can indicate a leg length difference that could have a factor on Lower Back Pain. The trained eye can observe a Forward Shoulder rotation, which can reveal posterior Shoulder Pain as well as Thoracic Back Pain. A Gait Analysis can reveal a limp or favoritism of a limb.

What is Biomechanical Testing? Biomechanical Testing involves the analysis of body motion and movement within identifiable specific planes of that motion and movement. This could involve AROM-Active Range of Motion, PROM-Passive range of Motion, Resistive and other special tests that could possibly help to uncover the source of a persons pain.

Why is Palpation an important part of the Pain Assessment? Analysis of soft tissue by feel, better known as Palpation, is an important part of the information gathering process, that lets the practitioner know the health of the soft tissues that are involved with a persons chronic pain. As part of Palpation, the practitioner gets a better understanding of soft tissue health by evaluating soft tissue texture, temperature, and tone. Diagnostic Palpation also includes the Joint Mobility Test as an important diagnostic test that is used to determine whether or not the spinal column is a chronic pain syndrome contributor.

Effective Chronic Pain Management is impossible without a systematic, Diagnostic Based Pain Assessment. A divide and conquer treatment strategy for the reduction and possible elimination of chronic pain can no longer be attained without an organized Diagnostic based Pain Assessment. The battle against chronic pain is a daunting task without an organized Diagnostic based Pain Assessment, and has direct impact upon the ability and skill of clinical and medical massage therapists to provide patients with new hope, strategies and tactics in the battle against chronic pain.

Tags: alternative medicine, arthritis, chronic pain, chronic pain management, exercise, fitness, Health, massage, medical massage, Men's Health, pain, pain management, womens health

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 2:11 AM and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.