Pain Reduction
Typically what patients are looking for when they visit my office is relief of their pain, whether that be related to their low back, neck, headaches or their extremities (arms and legs). Each condition is different and proper diagnosis is essential to developing a proper treatment plan. Due to this fact, doctors who employ “cookie cutter” treatment protocols usually fail to serve the majority of their patient base. At NOVA spine & injury center, we employ a variety of different methods specific to your condition and response to treatment to reduce pain levels; myofascial release (soft tissue techniques similar to massage), physical medicine modalities (electrical stimulation, ultrasound, therapeutic cold laser, traction, and diathermy), and spinal manipulation are used to reduce pain levels when appropriate. The myofascial release techniques used at our clinic were originally developed by the team chiropractor for the Los Angeles Kings professional hockey team. Dr. Shaffer has stayed true to the essence of these techniques but has also tweaked the protocols to develop very effective treatments for most musculoskeletal (relating to muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bone) conditions.
Spinal manipulation can be a little scary for a patient who is new to chiropractic care, but be assured that it has been proven to be very safe for the majority of the population. Proper screening is necessary for patients with certain cardiovascular concerns but serious consequences occur in only 1 in 1.5 to 3.0 million manipulations. The FDA considers any therapy that has serious complication rates less than 1 in 400,000 to be very safe and thus chiropractic manipulation (more than 3 times safer) should be considered in this category. Be assured that spinal manipulation is only used when the appropriate and it is only one tool used in this office. Other therapies can be used in its place if a patient requests.
In addition, at NOVA spine & injury center we use high technology to treat certain conditions. These therapies are Cold Laser (TheraLase) and Spinal Decompression (IDD Therapy), which have been found to vastly improve outcomes when used to treat certain conditions. Cold laser has dramatically decreased the time needed to treat injuries to muscles but especially tendons and ligament. Due to poor blood supplies to tendons and ligaments, injuries to these regions are slow to heal and often frustrate clinicians. In the past, tendonitis injuries could take up to 8 to 12 weeks to fully heal, but with the addition the TheraLase Cold Laser the healing time is often cut in half. The injuries that fall into these categories are tendonitis (tennis and golfer’s elbow, jumper’s knee, as well as rotator cuff injuries), ligament sprains, carpal tunnel syndrome (wrist), tarsal tunnel syndrome (foot/ankle), and of course muscle strains.
As patients improve and their pain lessens they will be placed into a rehab program to strengthen the injured areas to help prevent reoccurrence (see Rehab section).