A question I hear often and that I’ve read recently on Facebook is regarding are X-Rays are always necessary when you go to the Chiropractor or always necessary to start chiropractic care. Well, the reality is that like everything else we do in chiropractic, like everything we do in my office, is that the answer is dependent on what your needs are. There is no universal one size fits all formula. We have patients who are in their 80’s. Some are in their 30’s. Parents bring their babies who bring newborns and I’ll tell you what, their needs and their recommendations are going to vary greatly from one person to the other. It would make no sense if they all needed the same thing!
The reality is that for most people, once they have had the opportunity to have some damage in their spine, we want to know what’s there. If you have been in a car accident, or if you were a skateboard or snowboard king as a teenager. If you did gymnastics or played a contact sport. If you have used your phone or played lots of video games. It really just makes sense, it is the safe thing, it’s reasonable to take x-rays. The imaging allows us to rule out contra-indications, identify underlying conditions and measure progress. It’s very, very important. So, for a lot of adults, we’re going to be taking X-Rays. In the case of babies, we never take X-Rays. In the case of children, a little older, unless we’re suspecting a trauma where there would be a fracture of a bone or we’re suspecting scoliosis we will take or order x-rays.
If we find distortions, we need to track and measure the evolution so we know the impact we have. Because it’s going to affect their health or wellbeing or their appearance then we’re going to take X-Rays. But with children, that’s rare, that’s the exception, not the rule. Most adults come in with significant history of traumas or stresses. Maybe they have poor posture. Or they have problems that make imagine reasonable to ensure we give them the most appropriate care. We consistently want to provide the safest most effective way to get from where you are starting to where you want to be. We want to make it possible for you to resume the activities you want to perform in your life and X-Rays are going to enable us to access what’s going on very precisely so that we can have the safest, fastest, and most efficient care recommendations.
Additionally, imaging is a great tool to measure results. Results are important. Not only do we want our patients to feel better. We want you to also function better and we want you to maintain the higher level of function over a period of time past the period of intensive care. For these reasons, X-Rays are useful in many cases. They’re a great tool that give us an objective measure of progress. So, the answer to the question: “do we always need X-Rays?” Is sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. But, it’s really important that when you do need them, you get them. I look forward to seeing you soon!