Doctors of Osteopathy

The Approach To Care

An osteopathic physician’s tendency is approach patients with a “whole person approach” when it comes to medicine. One of the things that makes doctors of osteopathy so different is that they receive extra training in the musculoskeletal system of the body’s interconnected system of nerves, muscles, and bones which make up two-thirds of the human body mass.

This advanced education in the musculoskeletal system is unique and it gives them therapeutic and diagnostic advantage over those medical providers that do not receive this specialized training.

Today, osteopaths that treat the spine have the same needs as any other provider: accurate diagnosis of the patient’s underlying spinal condition.

When a spine is injured, there are three different lesions that can occur: a fracture, which is picked up on a CT or x-ray; and, 2, connective tissue injuries. One could be a disc herniation picked up on MRI or the other which causes excessive motion to the spine, which is picked up with stress x-rays, and the use of CRMA or computerized radiographic mensuration analysis, which is an advanced x-ray measurement technology that allows Spinal Kinetics board-certified medical radiologists to accurately measure the exact abnormal intersegmental motion problems that occur with these spinal ligament injuries.

This allows the doctor of osteopathy to clinically correlate for any areas of spinal instability. That may include a disc herniation or may not include a disc herniation. These advanced testing procedures for the spine allow doctors of osteopathy to accurately and quickly assess the exact injury that the patient may have so that they can start a proper treatment plan and get the patient speedily back on the road to a full recovery. Doctors of osteopathy are very important providers in the back and neck injury space of medicine.