I just read an interesting, but distressing article with the same title as this blog entry in the July 23rd New York Times - Thursday Styles section by Gina Kolata
Gina is a long-distance runner who tore her hamstring - the muscle on the back of the thigh.
Being a long-distance runner myself, I can only have the most sympathy for her.
Been there, did it done it. It’s the pits. Few things are worse
Well almost.
One thing that is worse is not knowing what to do about the injury.
Gina is getting advice from all quarters and from the article she wrote in the Times, most of it sounds absolutely ridiculous.
If this was your cat, your kid, your car or the space shuttle - would anybody put up with this:
Her hometown MD / Orthopedist Dr. concluded she injured her hamstring ....Brilliant!
He sends her to Dr. Feinberg at Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC.
He says the "magic letters" PRP which stands for Platelet Rich Plasma - Ooh! they take your (at least you know where it came from...), own blood out of a vein in your arm and inject it into the site of the injury. You’re supposed to stop All activity ( running in Gina's case), that caused the original injury for several weeks to months. It theoretically causes a "switch" to be turned on and a miraculous healing to take place. Right!
They charge up to a $1000 for the injection to be done - That’s not for the substance that is injected (that’s yours to begin with). - a $1000 to give you a shot!
The people at Hospital for Special Surgery readily admit there have been no valid studies and there’s none in the works to substantiate that this treatment is anything but experimental and results to date are admittedly anecdotal.
Funny - that’s what the MD’s have always say about chiropractic. When chiropractor gets a gal back to work after a back injury they say "Ah, she would have gotten better anyway..."
Now anecdotal is no longer junk science and is acceptable...
In this case the docs say tendon injuries are not well understood nor is the reason they heel.
But they will charge $1000 to inject you with your own blood because somebody had it done and didn’t do anything for 4- 6 months and her tendon heeled and... So they claim it was the injection of the patient’s own blood that did it ????
Are you kidding me?
I’m not sure about the MD’s, but
we chiropractors study, among other body parts, tendons, what injures them, how they heel and - how long it takes to heel.
Referring to your embryology textbook you’ll find that tendons are made of a type of tissue that takes 6-8 weeks to grow New cells and thus heel... Just like bones and ligaments.
Remember we heel by growing new cells and that doesn’t happen by squirting more of your own blood all over the torn / damaged cells.
What would really help our friend Gina is to analyze her lower spine, hips and pelvis for misalignments and correct that.
This problem will never go away until you fix what caused it.
I would put my money on finding that the side of her pelvis (that she has the torn hamstring) is tipped forward or anteriorly compared to the opposite. When looking in the mirror, that same side will present as raised up & superior compared to the lower and opposite side. When laying down straight, the leg on the torn hamstring side will present, functionally, longer than the other.
This type of misalignment will cause the hamstring to be tighter and prone to tearing. Her stride when walking and running will be altered and she will not reach / kick as far as the other leg. The brain will over-compensate and the muscle will be torn as result.
It will also, in time, cause failure of the hip on the same side (as the torn tendon). Are they going to do another experimental "PRP" injection for that too?
Following a series of adjustments to correct this imbalance and a series of cold laser treatments to promote natural tissue healing and a several weeks of incremental increases in rehabilitative running, work-hardening, and re-conditioning she will be able to return to a full schedule of running as she had prior to her injury with minimal risk of re-injury.
I bet nobody said this to her. Not when they can get her or her insurance to pay $1000.
The chiropractic treatment program referred to above which has a long track record of successes would probably cost about $500 but the insurance would probably not pay for it.
No wonder she’s frustrated.
I had a hip replacement from johnson's & johnson's company DePuy. DePuy is a franchise of orthopedic and neuroscience companies which provide body part replacements. But its hip replacements ball-socket system had to be recalled and i had to bear pain, suffering and legal headaches.
Posted by: DePuy Hip Claims | October 11, 2010 at 09:22 AM
You made some good points with this article. Too bad that none of the doctors who treated her explained her all what you wrote so correctly, or even recommended chiropractic treatment. You asked a good question about what they going to do when her hip fails? Probably hip replacement surgery, which could have been prevented with the right treatment.
Posted by: Hip Implant | February 01, 2012 at 01:10 PM