Diagnosis as cause not source of Pain

A Patients symptom can be one of the worst diagnostic tools for 2 reasons; when we are talking about injuries there’s the source and then there’s the cause.

For example, if a patient walks in with pain at the front of their shoulder – that’s the source of pain, where’s the cause? Cause and source don’t have to be in the same place, for example, the patient may have shoulder pain due to a herniated disc in their neck pushing on a spinal nerve that covers that area of the body. Hence the cause of the injury is the neck but the source of the pain is presenting in the shoulder.

So the source is important to understand where it fits in with the big picture but it is not always the diagnosis, the diagnosis is the cause of the source of pain.

Food for thought :)

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Angelo Campanella