Chiropractic Training: The Whole Picture

[Diego4Life]

When I was training to be a chiropractor, we were told to look at the whole picture when performing tests and evaluating a patient's health status. That means that say for example, a slow deep tendon reflex in a patella tendon, without weakness, atrophy, pain etc, was nothing more than a slow reflex. Clinically insignificant.

The same could be said for an EMG. Fascis with no other sign (considering the whole picture) are simply fascis. Yes they can show on an EMG and, OK it could be argued that this is not "normal", but neither does it mean that it is anything sinister or serious.

Hope this helps.

Diego4Life

 

[zEarthyRanger]

The Mayo report makes it clear it is partly because of such EMG findings that BFS can be shown to exist as a distinct syndrome:

"A syndrome of benign fasciculation emerges from a study of this group of 121 patients. In the majority of patients, excess fasciculations was demonstrated by EMG, which suggested that the symptom was not simply a heightened awareness of a normal phenomenon."

And they don't treat EMG with fascics as "abnormal" (at least for BFSers). They talk about a subgroup of 15 patients with "minor EMG abnormalities" - i.e. not the group who showed excessive fascics, but a much smaller subgroup. And even for that subgroup, of course, the outcome was benign.

 

[GinniferLynne]

D75 and Shuey are right.

It is the WHOLE picture.

If not, then we would really be able to diagnose ourselves via the internet (like I try to )