Do you need surgery for a full ACL rupture?

Uncategorized Nov 07, 2022

Do you need surgery for a full ACL rupture?

Despite surgical repair of ruptured ACLs being an almost automatic certainty in almost all countries on almost everyone… there is growing evidence that many don’t need surgery!

The impressive KANON trial showed that 58% of all ACL ruptures in their study healed within 5 years without surgery!

https://bmjopensem.bmj.com/content/8/Suppl_1/A3.2


And this could be even higher with a post injury protocol currently under investigation in Australia called the Cross Bracing Method

https://burleighphysio.com.au/article/acl-cross-bracing-method/

But even if the ACL doesn’t heal, many can still recover and return to high levels of function with good rehab just as well as surgical repair!

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But what about the risks of knee OA after an ACL injury! Surgery is often said to reduce this risk!

However there is currently no evidence that surgical repair reduces the rates of knee OA after ACL injury! In fact it may increase it!

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Ankle rehab – Did you know ankles are actually connected to people

Uncategorized Oct 19, 2022

 

Faraz Sethi – MSK Physiotherapist

Patient Perspectives

 ‘There is an inner voice of it reoccurring; the fear of having another episode prevents you from doing stuff, I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but there’s definitely a feeling of anxiety and low self confidence, I don’t feel good about myself or the world’

What the hell does the above statement have to do with an ankle sprain? Well, this is what I heard two weeks ago in clinical practice from a 34-year-old female, recreational netball player who had quite literally ‘had enough’ after no-one was able to validate her pain experience from the past 3 years. All she wanted was some empathy…not a diagnosis.

‘It was pointless going to A+E, waiting for six hours to be told by the junior doctor on call to rest it, ice it, no netball for four weeks’ she explained, as well as leaving with a bag full of medications and creams. Sound alarmingly familiar?...

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Good news for back pain!

Uncategorized Mar 10, 2022

When a patient tells me they have read something in the newspaper about back pain my heart sinks and my left eye starts to involuntarily twitch as usually its some ill-informed garbage about a quick fix, or drivel about a miracle cure that I have to try and convince them is utter bull shit. But from this week there is hope that a patient has at last actually read something useful about their back pain in the media.

The Lancet published three very important papers about back pain. These papers authored by the worlds leading researchers highlight how back pain is a huge global burden affecting millions if not billions of people worldwide, and how it is getting worse despite advances in healthcare, medicine and surgery. Please go and read these papers here, they are freely accessible and well worth an hour of your time.

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These articles highlight how back pain is often grossly mismanaged and over treated with many ineffective and dangerous treatments such as surgery,...

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WTF is the BCP?

Uncategorized May 02, 2021

Who are we?

The Better Clinician Project or BCP for short, is an easily accessible online platform that delivers clinically applicable information in easily digestible bite sized chunks. Set up back in 2019 by Adam Meakins and Ben Cormack, two well known clinician’s on the international teaching scene, the BCP has grown into a vast resource of evidence based clinical education that can be accessed easily via your computer or our app anywhere and anytime.

 Our slogan is “By clinicians, for clinicians” and this guides how we design and deliver our content to make it applicable to you the clinician. It’s not about us, it's about YOU and we are growing into a healthy and interactive online community that is a safe space to ask questions, find information and post tricky cases. The BCP is for ALL clinicians. We have physio’s, osteo’s, chiro’s, trainers, massage therapists, sports therapists and even more. You name it, we got it. This brings...

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I believe you!

Uncategorized Nov 22, 2020

Over the last 4 weeks, myself and Ben Cormack have been interviewing patients on the 'Better Clinician Project' to gain their insights and experiences of both healthcare and the clinicians working within it. I have found these discussions such an invaluable resource and have learnt so much from them all and I cannot urge you all enough to go watch them now here.

I know that as a clinician you may be thinking, why do I need to listen to more patients when I’m already listening to so many of my own? I used to think like that as well, but there are a number of very good reasons to go and listen to other patients reflecting about their interactions with other clinicians as it can give us insight into what our current patients may be feeling and thinking but not telling us.

You don't know much

I don’t care how good you may think you are at communicating I will guarantee that most of your patients won’t be telling you everything they know or feel, and this is...

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THE SCIENCE BEHIND WHY ASSESSING AND BLAMING POSTURE FOR PAIN IS BS

Uncategorized Oct 28, 2020

If I had a £ for everybody that mentioned posture on social media or when they had a pain problem…… well lets just say I would be a pretty rich guy.

POSTURE has literally become engrained in peoples thoughts when talking about back, shoulder or neck pain even though we have a shit ton of studies that compare the postures of pain free people with those with back, shoulder or neck pain and find no real differences, this information gets regularly IGNORED.

NEVER let science get in the way of a good story, especially if it’s on the interwebs!

But just to kick off with a bit of science, this paper HERE from 2016 found NO significant difference in lumbar lordosis (spinal curve) between people with back pain and those without.

This is super important. HOW can we blame something that we see in people WITHOUT pain as a cause of pain for those that do?

I will just let that sink in……

WHAT ARE YOU MEASURING?

So in this blog we are going to...

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DIVIDED WE STAND

Uncategorized Aug 10, 2020

Here at the BCP, we try our best to find the delicate balance between the clinical and academical worlds. But it's tough, really tough trying to find the best evidence-based solutions for our patients whilst dealing with the day to day clinical realities and challenges.

Find out how the BCP is closing the gap between the academical and clinical worlds here

Despite some initiatives to bring the clinical and academical worlds closer together, it does still feel like there is a huge metaphorical divide between them.

Often clinicians feel like academics and researchers don't appreciate or understand the time and resource restrictions they face, and academics feel like clinicians are ignorant and lethargic in understanding basic scientific principles and following research-informed suggestions.

And so it appears that many clinicians and academics are 'standing divided' in their attempts to help patients and unless this divide is reduced then both are going to be united in...

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IS YOUR ANTERIOR PELVIC TILT SLOWLY KILLING YOU?

Uncategorized May 21, 2020

Now there’s a sensational title to draw you in! Admit it I got ya!

I thought would do a quick bloggy thing on anterior pelvic tilts (APT) and the associated problems they may cause based on a recent discussion I had. It is certainly not an original post by any means but it is a topic that will not die. In fact any blog post out there that focuses on a bit of the research into this topic rather than just the theory is just a drop in the ocean compared to the mountains of well…stories really. These pieces tend to be thick on biomechanical theory of X pulls Y and causes Z (generally pain) but much thinner on any real science to back it up.

ATP

That theory may go a bit like this. You sit too much therefore your hip flexors get tight which pull your pelvis into an anterior pelvic tilt that increases your lumbar lordosis which gives you your back pain.

The humble APT is blamed for all sorts from lower back pain to groin pain and hip pain, in fact any pain that is remotely...

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THE 10 BEST THERAPISTS

Uncategorized May 05, 2020

A previous article I wrote called 'The 10 worst therapists' a while ago highlighted some of the flaws and issues I see in many therapists across all the professions. However, I thought it's also time to look at the other side of the coin and discuss what are the 10 attributes and traits of the best therapists I know across all the professions.

However, before we get started if you want to become a better therapist then please check out THE BETTER CLINICAL PROJECT HERE.

Now before I start this is not an exhaustive list and these are by no means all my own traits. If I'm being honest I reckon I score around a 5 or 6 here, with me slipping on some of these traits from time to time. In fact I seriously doubt any of you could say you are all 10 of these, all the time. However, I think if we all tried a little harder to score as high as we can, as often as we can, then I don't think we can go far wrong. So without further ado, here are my 10 best therapists.

No 1: The Caring...

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FREE Webinar: Challenges & Opportunities of Online Consultations for MSK Clinicians

Uncategorized Apr 21, 2020
 

This is a full recording of our extremely popular FREE 1 hour webinar on the challenges and opportunities of online consultations. 

We wanted to make this available to everybody that missed it or could not get signed up due to the popularity. 

If you like what you see PLEASE go and check out the "Better Clinician Project" *CLICK HERE* 

Or you can get directly signed up HERE

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