Author: Stephen Henry

Best treatment to stop knee pain.

/ Stephen Henry / 1 Comment

 

Warning- an anecdotal post to 1) stimulate reflection on musculoskeletal pain and treatment. 2) Encourage experiment with ones own pain 3) Self reflection on resolution of my own knee pain with 1 exercise.

Oh that pesky knee pain. As I attempt to train for a year filled with fitness goals and by far the most long distance races in one year the all too familiar running partner relentlessly tags along, knee pain. Knee pain and I seem to ALWAYS meet up at the 3 mile mark for the past 3 months. Knee pain who skips the warm up and starts on strong on the right knee then soon after left knee, medial and lateral burning/stinging with a feeling of superficial fullness. What I would call a bursitis pain with a feeling of simply too much friction.

Being the therapist I am, and with a curiosity of pain, body, and exercise, I ask this. Continue reading →

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Cervical Artery Dissection: Implications for the Physical Therapist A Case Report from a Direct Access Environment

/ Stephen Henry / 16 Comments

Intro:

You receive a call from your friend and fellow DPT classmate to evaluate her neck… the patient herself is a physical therapist by occupation. A healthy and fit 29 year old female, 5’0″, 115lbs. She reports she is having some cervical musculoskeletal issues going on. She has an achy pain in the bilateral upper traps., levator scapula, and peri-cervical muscles. She is limited by pain with the following cervical motions: right side-bend, right rotation and extension. No signs of central or peripheral neurological issues.

You are an experienced PT and have completed many cervical manipulations on a patient like this and it’s the end of your day. So you are going to do a quick favor for a friend and manipulate her neck, complete some STM, and maybe some PROM/SNAGs/isometrics/METs or whatever your favorite manual therapy technique is. What could go wrong? She’s a therapist herself so she wouldn’t miss anything serious. Being that you are friends you want to do some “magic” giving her some relief of symptoms. So… snap, crackle, manip. You move into some PROM and she reports severe vertigo, nausea, double vision, and you notice hemi-facial asymmetries as she talks about her onset of symptoms. Now what?  Your table, your hands, your patient. Continue reading →

A review of the ankle and foot (Part 1): Anatomy

/ Stephen Henry / 2 Comments

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In prep for my first week as a full-time employed physical therapist I started reviewing the ankle and foot… thank you Dutton for the all-encompassing reference. It might sound odd why I would chose the ankle out of all body parts to start. It’s simple; referral source driven, like most things. So me being the young, diligent, type A person I am what else would I do but read Chapter 21 “The Ankle and Foot” by Mark Dutton so that I may try and perform at an above satisfactory level come Monday. In the midst of my efforts I decided to turn it into an opportunity for me to construct and share a review of this difficult yet amazing anatomical structure that humbly allows us to walk all over it. (pun intended)

Part 1: Anatomy (this post)

Part 2: Biomechanics and Pathology (next…)

Let me start with some of the statistics about the ankle and foot to demonstrate its Continue reading →