Mrs S presented with a 6 week history of right elbow pain which had developed after a period of home renovations. She also had a left hip problem that she had put up with for years.
She was having difficulty getting undressed, brushing her teeth and combing her hair due to her elbow pain, and the hip was painful after 15-20min of driving.
A thorough whole body examination revealed that Mrs S’s thoracic spine was very stiff and several vertebral segments were misaligned. She also had dysfunctions around the front of lumbar spine (through the belly), limited left hip left flexion, reduced right shoulder internal rotation… and her grip strength was 5kg on the affected but dominant side.
Realigning Mrs S’s thoracic spine through manual techniques resulted in her grip strength improving to a massive 28kg within only a few minutes…an improvement of over 500%! Other dysfunctions around the lumber spine also improved on testing over 80%.
Upon review she reported a 50% improvement in her undressing, and brushing her teeth and combing her hair were both almost pain-free. Her ability to drive for 30min pain-free had also improved 30%.
We continued to work on Mrs. S’s thoracic spine and the postural influences that affect this area.
This case is an example of how a client’s problem may be far removed from the area of symptoms, and how this can be solved through a systematic clinical reasoning process.
