Język / Language
The history of our patient was interesting and dating back for many years. The first sign of a crisis was the presence of an acute pain symptom of lumbar spine, with a sciatica pain. Typically, spine and herniation were blamed which led to a typical treatment consisting of bed rest, medication intake, and hoping for a miracle. Thankfully, or not, the symptoms subsided.
Medication muffled the symptoms, but what about the cause of pain? Don’t worry, it peacefully waited for the next show of strength. It made its presence known during the rescue action in an accident, as our patient is a fireman. There’s been a sudden knee instability which resulted in joint sprain, which in turn caused knee and thigh pain preventing proper mobility. Pain continued chronically and caused the patient to take a leave from work from August to the date of our first meeting in November.
During this period of time the patient was of course diagnosed. The first idea was to cut out meniscus, although it was fully efficient. The next idea based on the reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) despite it also being in good condition. The third option consisted of pain medication intake.
Having heard the whole story, we checked the muscle strength which showed serious weakening of quadriceps, especially on the left side. Afterwards, we examined the whole muscle in search of differences in tissue density which resulted in the weakening. We found the cause of the longstanding problem in only 10 minutes; in fact, it was hard to miss such a big object.
The mythical fascia was to blame, more specifically – deep quadriceps femoris fascia. In this case, because of the thickening of the muscle area it became a completely redundant set of fibers with high pressure. Muscle weakening of this area significantly destabilizes pelvis. Unstable pelvis leads to the instability of the spine, which in turn becomes a symptom of lower back pain and sciatica. Let’s leave the spine be, as there is more things in human body.
When manual work on the muscle area with so high pressure turns out to be ineffective, often the dry needling method comes to the rescue. Dry needling causes the muscle fibers to loosen by puncturing the structure of high density. In this case, the target was so hard that 6/0,035cm needle could barely manage to puncture it.
After puncturing the structure we had to incorporate the fascial chains in order to increase the relaxation.
Drop in pressure unblocked the muscle enough to enable the patient to work on it by himself. At this point, after the second treatment, we regained all significant functions of the leg. We got rid of pain and numbness sensations. Simultaneously, we solved the back pain problem.
It’s incredible what can be achieved when we treat the body, and not the symptom.