Tag: Research Evidence

Treatment of Tendinopathy  – Research Update – February 2014

Treatment of Tendinopathy – Research Update – February 2014

I thought it might be time to begin revisiting some of the key topics I have covered thus far. The first topic to update being Treatment of Tendinopathy. For those interested, my last post in this topic can be found here. One of the great recent articles I reviewed was by Rio et al (2014). […]

By February 25, 2014 3 Comments Read More →
Neurological Examination for Radiculopathy

Neurological Examination for Radiculopathy

I found this recent article regarding neurological examination for radiculopathy interesting. Al Nezari et al (2013) conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature investigatingĀ the diagnostic accuracy of the neurological examination to detect lumbar disc herniation with suspected radiculopathy. The authors foundĀ 14 studies that investigated three standard neurological examination components (sensory, motor, and reflexes) […]

By February 12, 2014 2 Comments Read More →
Treatment of Chronic Pain?

Treatment of Chronic Pain?

Hopefully anyone seeing the title of this post will not be clicking on it thinking that I have the answers to chronic pain……please note the maze in the cover image and the question mark at the end of the title! Lets be honest, the outcomes that chronic pain patients are achieving, via all forms of […]

By January 30, 2014 3 Comments Read More →
MRI Findings in Low Back Pain

MRI Findings in Low Back Pain

Hopefully we are all familiar with the current view that most lower back pain is “non-specific” in nature. What this means is that there is no obvious finding on imaging (MRI etc) that can explain a cause of the patients pain. But what is some of evidence base in relation to MRI findings in low […]

By December 11, 2013 21 Comments Read More →
Clinical Diagnosis of Meniscal Tears in the Knee – Research Evidence

Clinical Diagnosis of Meniscal Tears in the Knee – Research Evidence

Hi all. This post continues on with the theme relating to the “usefulness” of clinical tests. The time the topic of this post is “Clinical Diagnosis of Meniscal Tears in the Knee – Research Evidence”. Once again this post throws values around for sensitivity, specificity, LR’s etc. So here is some information from a previous […]

By November 23, 2013 3 Comments Read More →
Is it Peer Reviewed?

Is it Peer Reviewed?

Please see the following link to an article written in a newspaper titled “The Australian”, by a gentleman named Brendan O’Neill. What do we want? Peer review. When do we want it? Never. Whilst this article mainly refers to climate change as an example of a scientific subject, I think this article is very relevant […]

By October 21, 2013 0 Comments Read More →
VMO and Patellofemoral Pain

VMO and Patellofemoral Pain

I have previously discussed Patellofemoral pain and the evidence base behind the diagnosis, pre-disposing factors and treatment of this disorder (link here). As discussed in the above-mentioned post a significant volume of literature would suggest that the clinical utility of “clinical tests” for diagnosing Patellofemoral pain is poor, that being they lack specificity, sensitivity, and […]

By October 15, 2013 0 Comments Read More →
Stretching – What does it actually do?

Stretching – What does it actually do?

I was always taught that stretching improved the flexibility of the muscle group. This occurred by changing the muscle structure, for example a structural change to the myofibril. The following three studies I recently read have been enlightening regarding this: Law et al (2009) A RCT investigating the effects of a 3 week stretching program […]

By September 30, 2013 0 Comments Read More →
Diagnosis of Spinal Pain – Research Evidence

Diagnosis of Spinal Pain – Research Evidence

For this post I wanted to continue the trend of posts regarding the usefulness of clinical tests to diagnose specific “structural” dysfunctions. The previous post being about the hip, this post being about “spinal” clinical tests. How useful are our clinical tests in the diagnosis of spinal pain? I think the article by Cook and […]

By September 23, 2013 3 Comments Read More →
Clinical Tests for the Hip – Labral Tears, Hip Impingement, Intra-articular Hip Pathologies.

Clinical Tests for the Hip – Labral Tears, Hip Impingement, Intra-articular Hip Pathologies.

Further to my last post I thought we might start by looking at the clinical usefulness of tests we do for diagnosis of hip disorders. So todays question: How useful are Clinical Tests for the Hip in diagnosing Labral Tears, Hip Impingement and/or Intra-artciular Hip Pathologies? Evidence Regarding Orthopaedic Clinical/Special Tests A systematic review by […]

By August 12, 2013 6 Comments Read More →