Sana Khan – Imaging and its Relevance to Your Practice

CalChiro LA Metro District Presents: "Imaging and its Relevance to Your Practice"

MRI results are often a fork-in-the-road not only in clinical decision making but also in the direction of litigation in med-legal cases. It is a simple, yet fundamental observation that many human musculoskeletal conditions are impacted by gravity, and that many patients experience signs and symptoms in weight bearing positions even when they do not in the recumbent one.  Thus, recumbent imaging alone may not demonstrate the full degree of pathology, due to muscle and ligament relaxation and in the case of the spine, disc retraction. Conventional magnetic resonance imaging systems are limited to acquiring scans with patients in the recumbent position (r-MRI).

The Positional Weight-Bearing MRI (pwb-MRI) system allows upright, angled (slanted) and recumbent imaging, replicating partial or full weight bearing conditions. It also allows kinetic maneuvers of the patient’s whole body or any body part. Our service enables imaging of the relevant body part in any position of normal everyday stress, across the limits of normal range of motion. Even more importantly, imaging is performed in the specific position of the patient’s clinical symptomatology.

Several published scientific studies and reviews have validated that radiologically occult but clinically relevant weight bearing and/or motion dependent disease can be better demonstrated on pwb-MRI compared to conventional MRI. These studies have imaged the spine in a close-to-physiological state, either by using external axial loading or better still, by imaging with flexion-extension, in the erect position using pwb-MRI. The literature indicates that Positional Weight-Bearing MRI provides a more sensitive evaluation of spinal pathology. This in turn may provide the referring physician with a more relevant diagnosis, especially in cases where the pain is worse in a sitting or standing position.

This program has been approved for 2.5 General & X-Ray CE hours by the CA Board of Chiropractic Examiners:  CA-A-20-06-05007.