A short YouTube video by Dr. Jeff Langmaid advising against immediate MRI for neck pain. He explains that history and physical examination usually suffice, MRIs commonly show age-related degenerative findings that may be asymptomatic, and recommends 4–6 weeks of conservative, movement-based care (physical therapy or chiropractic) before imaging unless red flags are present.
Questions this video answers
4–6 weeks
Over 50% of individuals
Chapters
Do you need an MRI for neck pain? My name is Dr. Jeff Langman. Over the next few minutes, I'm going to try to help you answer that question. If you've struggled with neck pain for a day, a week, a month, a year or longer, you might be asking yourself, do I need to get an MRI to determine what's going on on the inside? Especially if you have pain that travels or severe pain, you might come to believe that an MRI is exactly what you need to get to the bottom and solve the mystery of what's causing the pain. But what I wanna caution you and what the guidelines and research showcase to us is, do not rush in to get that mri. Why do I say that? Because we have found that proper examinations, proper history taking, 9 times out of 10 can give you all the information you need to craft and create a care plan that can help get you on the road to recovery without the need for drugs and surgery. What we have found and what the researchers have discovered is, is that the earlier you get an MRI after an injury, the more likely you are to end up with advanced interventions like injections and surgery. MRIs are a fantastic tool to help surgeons know exactly what's going on on the inside, make the proper diagnosis and the proper surgical plan. However, they are not the best tools if you're early on or you have not received care yet to help determine the best course of action. And this is because an MRI is going to showcase every single thing in and around your neck, and that is not perfect. I used to practice at a large orthopedic group and Review up to 20 MRIs each and every day. And for many people, they were scary. These reports came back and they were multiple pages of a whole bunch of terms. This person came in and thought they had one problem, and after the MRI report, they perceived that they might have had dozens of problems. And that is super, super scary. But here's the truth of that, is that MRI show everything that's not perfect. And it's the physician's job to pick out which are the problems. Let me say that even clearer. It is very unlikely that if you get an MRI and you see a laundry list of issues, that many of them are actually issues. It's very common to have degenerative changes as we age. Those changes will show up on an MRI report. So an MRI report at every single level might show disc bulges, might show osteophytes or bone spurs, might show degenerative changes. Believe it or not, you can live with those things and not have any issues whatsoever. It's estimated that over 50% of individuals have a disc bulge or herniation by the time they're 50 and not many of them have pain due to that challenge. So a problem is different than an issue. And your problem if you're struggling with pain probably can be found on an mri, but it's not something that you should rush into. Movement based care and therapy such as physical therapy and chiropractic has been recommended by all major healthcare organizations before you go through any injections, certainly before you go through any surgery, unless there are extreme red flags. So if you are struggling with pain, I feel for you. It is no fun to have neck pain, but don't be confused and think that getting an MRI as the starting point is the best item for your care. There's an exceptionally high correlation between getting early imaging and getting advanced intervention. So if you are looking to stay natural with your career, stick with the guidelines, stick with what the researchers know, which is care for at least four to six weeks. Movement based care such as chiropractic physical therapy for four to six weeks before having any imaging in the absence of red flags is a smart plan to help yourself get healthy and get well without jumping quickly to advanced interventions. So if you have neck pain, do you need an mri? I'm going to encourage you to go and speak with your physician to make sure that they can give you the best information regarding your specific case and but quite often you are going to have four to six weeks of conservative care before entertaining the idea of having an image and that is the best way to go about things. My name is Dr. Jeff Langmaid. If you'd love to learn more about how to live a healthy life, subscribe to this channel. Check out the next video coming up and I'll talk to you very soon. Bye bye. Hey, what's going on? If you loved that video, be sure to subscribe to this channel. The evidence based chiropractor puts out videos all the time at the intersection of marketing and research, showing you how to grow your practice while also growing your knowledge base. So if you liked it, be sure to comment down below or hit subscribe and I'll see you in the next video.
