TREATMENT: WHAT TO EXPECT
Chiropractic Care
Chiropractic care goes much further than just the spine.
It is the care of muscles, joints, tendons, ligaments, soft tissues and nerves surrounding the affected area. It involves a number of types of treatment, not just the classic “cracking” manipulation of joints.
Your treatment will be tailored to you as an individual. On discharge, exercises are almost always advised to maintain improvement and reduce the need for further appointments.
Treatment may include one or more of the following courses of action:
- Chiropractic manipulation
- Soft tissue work
- Kinesio taping
- Stretching exercises
- Dry needling (medical acupuncture)
- Shockwave therapy
FAQs
New patient appointments are 40 minutes. Follow up appointment, 20 minutes. Please arrive 10 minutes before your first appointment to complete New Patient forms.
No. It is better to get undressed to your underwear (privacy and a gown will be provided) as this makes the Chiropractic manipulation easier to perform and allows soft tissue work; ultrasound and acupuncture to be performed if necessary.
However some patients prefer to keep their clothes on and this is respected.
Dr Miller & Associates offer a very gentle approach to Chiropractic. If at any stage the treatment potentially involves pain they will inform you.
On your first visit following a history and examination Dr Miller and Associates will advise you on how many treatments they think you will need in order to gain a certain percentage of pain relief. On average most patients who present with non-disc related neck and back pain experience improvement within four visits. On a recent audit, 75% of Alistair’s patients are discharged from his care within 4-6 visits over a period of 2-4 weeks.
No. If you think of your spine as a car, if it is ageing and worn the mechanic may not be able to fix it but will be able to make it run better. This analogy works for back and neck pain in more elderly patients therefore as a consequence they often require regular treatment to maintain their improvement. In all cases we will attempt to leave the gap as long as possible between visits, hopefully seeing you just before you “break down”. Young, fit, active patients with only minimal spinal degenerative change, we recommend do not have frequent treatment (this is Dr Miller and Associates’ personal opinion and practice style and does not necessarily represent other Chiropractor’s approach to patient management).
