Tag Archives: arthritis

Importance of X-Rays in Chiropractic Care

Hi, I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino, and this is your Health Minute. A lot of people ask about x-ray, and why x-ray is important. Is it safe, and there’s a variety of questions that involve x-rays. So, I wanted to talk about it a little bit. X-ray is incredibly safe, especially now that we have digital x-ray systems and high frequency systems that keep the dosage low, so they equate it to the effects on the body, much like a sunburn. In other words, it does have a damaging effect, but it’s slight, and it’s usually dissipated within two or three weeks.

I wanted to show you a little bit about the x-ray. This is a digital x-ray system. It’s state of the art, so there’s no film involved. Also, no processing with chemicals in a dark room, like you would see with traditional x-ray. So, you have a digital x-ray emitter, and then just a digital panel, then it comes to this console here where we capture the images and start to enhance them and crop them. And then we have another station over here, where we continue enhancing the images, we can get a lot of information that we wouldn’t normally have by getting these x-rays.

For example, we can see alignments, we can also see angles and so forth and get an idea of degenerative changes, like arthritic changes. Also, curvatures that aren’t supposed to be there. We can see deformities that exist in the spine. We can do before and after series, which is kind of cool, ’cause we can see actual changes, not only in the way the patient’s feeling, but we can actually mark them side by side and see those changes.

This is a scoliosis patient here, probably tough to see on this view, before and after. You can see the patient’s totally straight. There’s a reversed curvature in the neck, that curve is actually supposed to go this way. So, this is real important to see. There’s another one here where this is getting to be really arthritic and almost fused here, so important to see that. And scoliosis and so forth.

X-ray is a safe way to get really important information that we can’t otherwise glean. It helps us do a better job, and the care becomes much more affordable and much more timely, meaning we can get better results in a quicker amount of time by having this information. So, it’s definitely worth it, and having this state of the art equipment really helps make the exposure time lower, and it helps with a lot of the processing, because a lot of it, we just don’t have to do. So, there’s no chemicals in the office and things like that.

This is Dr. Steve Battaglino, and this has been your Health Minute.

The Importance of X-Rays

Hi, Dr. Steve Battaglino. Today I want to show you some X-rays, to show you the importance of x-ray. What kind of information we get from them that we can’t otherwise just glean from our hands.

This first x-ray series, this is “before and after,” so this is the side view of the neck like this and this is where the jaw is, the base of the skull. On the before x-ray, you can see its very straight, and then on the after x-ray, you can actually see a real nice gradual curvature. What it does is that curvature opens up these vertebrae and disks in the back where we can see they’re just about touching here on the before. A big change for the disks and nerve flow come in through there, but also in terms of arthritis as we age its crucial to get a proper curvature in there as much as possible. This is a “before and after” series of scoliosis patient, young man, 11 years old. You see curvature like this, real pronounced scoliosis. In fact, this patient was just waiting for surgery to have metal rods inserted up and down the spine on either side.

We were able to have him avoid that surgery, thank God. And we can see after four months of care, a very straight spine, much taller and much healthier in terms of energy level, digestion, and things like that. This is a neck curve, it’s actually a reversed neck curve. The neck curve… This is the jaw and base of the skull once again. The neck curve is supposed to go like this and this way. This neck curve is reversed and it causes a lot of stress and strain on the bones and the disks and joints and nerves of the neck. You can see actually some bone spurring forming here as the body tries to cope with that stress. This is a similar patient just fast forward probably 20 years where we can see the strain over time has caused this bird beak formation, this bone spurring. The body is trying to fuse these bones together to help with that strain of the neck being forward like that. We can see the disk, which is supposed to be nice and dark like this, is getting to be sort of obliterated there as well.

It’s important to catch these kind of problems in the alignment of the spine early on. This is another scoliosis patient where we can see real pronounced curvatures. It’s real important to catch this early on as well. You would think that this patient for example would be real distorted walking around, but they are not. Its amazing, but the body finds a way to compensate that makes them look almost straight. X-ray is crucial to be able to see really what’s was going on in the main points. This is the lower back from the side view. So this is the buttock here, this is the tummy here, the patient is looking this way. The main thing on this is a feature called spondylolisthesis. This your twenty dollar word of the day. It basically means this slippage here, these bones are supposed to pretty much line up with this. This is the sacrum or the base of the spine. This slippage here has a huge effect on low back, stability of the low back, its really important and know that its there to best treat it. Again, this is an x-ray diagnosis. We don’t really know about this by just feeling it.

We have curvatures in the neck, this is the left shoulder and the right. We see curvatures there that really can be best treated if we can figure out specifically where it’s locked up and why its doing what its doing. This is a type of scoliosis that we can’t really fix per se. It’s more of a support to kind of patch it and keep it functioning the best that I can, but basically this vertebrae is wedge-shaped instead of nice and cube-shaped like it’s normally its supposed to be. So it predisposes the spine to have that curvature to it. The body needs that curvature to compensate. We can see if things like this side slippage here, its kind of slipped this way. This is due to an injury probably before the age of 10. This man is probably in his late sixties now. To be able to see what’s causing a problem and to fix it and the best way and the most affordable way, the quickest way, x-ray is the way to go. That’s your little x-ray lesson your window in to the world of a chiropractic geek who marks x-rays until nine or 10 at night, till my wife calls me tells me to come home.

This is Dr. Steve and and this is been your x-ray minute.

How Long Should I See A Chiropractor?

Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic. A real frequently asked question is, “How long do I need to continue seeing the chiropractor?”

It’s a great question. The answer is it depends. It depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re trying to get relieved from an acute injury, for example, from a car accident or from a fall. It’s typically gonna take less time for you to get that relief from the pain or other symptoms than it will to actually fix that problem. So it’ll take a little bit longer to fix the problem, but the added benefit there is that you’ll have less recurrences and flare-ups in the future if we actually fix the problem.

How long will it take? Again, it depends on the severity of the problem, how long it’s been there, how active you are and your lifestyle. And also if there’s any degeneration there, bumps, burning, arthritis and those types of things. A qualified chiropractor can help sort all this out and come up with a game plan for your health goals by completing a neurological and orthopedic exam to get some information about that and also to take some x-rays. The x-rays show us a picture literally of what the spine looks like, and we can get an idea of how long the problem has been there, how severe it is, and so forth. I encourage you to consult with a qualified chiropractor to come up with a game plan that meets your health goals.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic.