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Richard
Burt had excruciating pain in his right lower back.
“For two years and nine
months I was in agony,” remembers the retired newspaperman. “I was at the
point where I could barely walk from the front door to the mailbox. I couldn’t
sleep. I lost thirty pounds because I couldn’t eat.”
Initially Richard
scheduled an appointment with his primary care physician.
“However, any medications
strong enough to have any effect on me made me nauseous,” confides Richard, “so
that didn’t work. Then my physician sent me to physical therapy; that didn’t
work, nor did pain management. Decompression did little to help me, so I tried
massage therapy, then acupuncture, and finally physical therapy again, all
without results.”
Richard says that by that
point he was willing to try anything: “But I didn’t know of anything left to
try.”
Then Richard read about
Jeffrey P. Johnson, DC, of Johnson Chiropractic Medical Center in Venice.
“I called Dr. Johnson’s
office and asked to have him phone me back,” recalls Richard, “and he did,
which surprised me based on my experiences with other health care providers. He
spoke with me for about an hour.”
Richard scheduled an appointment
with Dr. Johnson.
“He gave me a very thorough
examination,” notes Richard, “and he treated me for about three or four weeks
before deciding I was a good candidate for MUA.”
MUA
“For the majority of
patients, conventional treatments including chiropractic, physical therapy,
pain management techniques, and back surgery are successful in helping to
relieve patients’ pain,” educates Dr. Johnson. “However, for those patients who
are simply not responding successfully to these techniques, there is another
noninvasive solution.
“That treatment is MUA.”
Candidates for the MUA
procedure may include those with unresolved neck and back pain, frozen
shoulder, acute and chronic muscle spasm, nerve entrapment, herniated discs,
sciatica, headaches, or failed back surgery syndrome.
“Part of the body’s
natural healing response to injury is inflammation or swelling,” educates Dr.
Johnson. “With inflammation, a mesh of fibrotic tissue, commonly known as scar
tissue, is laid down to help promote the healing process. Although this tissue
is beneficial, some patients naturally form an excessive amount of it while
others suffer repeated injuries or recurring chronic conditions that can cause
layer upon layer to form in the muscles, tendons, and ligaments around the
joints, restricting the joint’s ability to move.
“Over time, the joints can
become more and more restricted and limited in their normal range of motion.
Joint dysfunctions occur, which lead to undue stress on the surrounding
tissues, resulting in secondary processes such as neck, back, shoulder and hip
conditions; sciatica and neuralgias; migraines and other headaches; and disc
herniations. Some of these conditions become so severe that nothing, including
surgery, seems to work.
“These patients may be
good candidates for MUA.”
With MUA, doctors can take
the affected joints through a traction range of motion while the patient is
under anesthesia, freeing the adhesions that have occurred between the joints
that are causing the patient’s pain.
“With the patient sedated,
we are able to use a very light stretching technique,” explains Dr. Johnson.
“Because we don’t have to fight against guarded, tense muscles, we are able to
break up scar tissue using far less aggressive manipulation than we ordinarily
would have to use in a typical setting.”
The MUA procedure is
repeated once daily on consecutive days, usually within a timeframe of between
one and three days.
“During the procedures
there are generally myself and an assistant, an MD, an anesthesiologist, and
several nurses,” notes Dr. Johnson. “It is definitely a team approach.”
“Dr. Johnson’s entire
staff is great; everyone in his office is really caring,” observes Richard,
“and he is a saint, an absolute pleasure. He even gave me his cell phone number
in case I needed him.
“I had three treatments
and then went to him probably five times a week for about two weeks. I’m now
down to one day a week and I’m just about finished.”
Typically there are six to
eight weeks of follow-up rehabilitation to reinforce the movement obtained
from the procedure. During this time patients are instructed on how to perform
stretching exercises to prevent the condition from returning.
“At that point we try to
release our patients,” explains Dr. Johnson, “placing them on a strengthening
program from which they are going to build up muscles around the areas that
were addressed so that the condition does not return.
“Fortunately, we’ve been
able to help many patients who were told they would have to learn to live with
their pain, when actually they didn’t.”
“I’m back to doing everything
I want to do,” marvels Richard. “I have actually joined a gym and have a
personal trainer. I even played eighteen holes of golf a few weeks ago, which
I had not been able to do for almost three years.
“Dr. Johnson is the
greatest thing that ever happened to me.” FHCN–Kris
Kline