One of my recent patients was a good candidate for spinal decompression therapy. This patient has had lower back pain with shooting pain down the leg for over two years. He was ready for surgery. I performed an exam and realized that he is a good candidate for spinal decompression therapy. His own wife was also a physiotherapist. He had been in many different clinics and had tried many different medications as well. He was pharmacist himself. Soon after two weeks of spinals decompression therapy his lower back started feeling better. He was able to sleep and work for longer hours. He now decided that he may not need surgery after all. His treatments included spinal decompression therapies three times a week, spinal manipulation once a week, pain-free standing stability exercises, super-pulsed laser therapy and some time acupuncture therapy. His pain levels were reduced by over 50% in the first 3 weeks. This was very promising and I was proud of our rehab protocol for this specific individual. However there remained a problem. The patient reported that after only 3 hours of standing his lower back started to hurt again. At first I that this pain was related to lack of stability of his lumbar and lower back muscles. This meant increase in his exercises. I also found out that this patient did not exercise at home like we recommended. Therefore I made him perform his exercises in the clinic along with his rehab exercises with our unique exercise machine. His pain only reduced a bit and continued to complain of severe lower back pain after three hours of standing. At this point is did a foot exam and realized that he had very flat feet. I had done this test before on him and had recommended custom made foot orthotics. This time I further recommend for him to be examined on our computerized gate scan.
Our GaitScan™ System is a revolutionary diagnostic tool for assessing our patient’s biomechanics. GaitScan™ has an industry high 4096 sensors and scans at an industry high 300Hz (scans per second). These measurements provide a sophisticated explanation of foot mechanics and assists with orthotic and/or shoe solutions.
The patient’s computerized scan showed that his foot does not have a proper arch when he stood up. The flat feet caused a negative kinetic chain affect rotating the knees and causing lower back pain.
The gait scan was emailed to Orthotic Company and the technicians there recreated his foot from our digital file using laser casting and made him proper custom made foot orthotics. After only using the orthotics for 3 days this patient’s lower back pain was over 80% gone. He no longer had to sit and continued to stand behind the pharmacy counter happy. I myself have extremely flat feet. I have been using orthotics for years. It is my strong opinion that foot orthotics can reduce knee arthritis as well.
