Individuals experiencing pain often seek out care from multiple practitioners and try a number of conservative management techniques, but the best way to ensure their pain is treated properly and effectively is through a thorough examination. And in this case of a young woman experiencing pain around her shoulder blade, our very specific, targeted intervention was able to resolve the issue, so the client could get back to comfortably living her normal daily life.
The client came to us experiencing pain on the inside of her shoulder blade somewhat close to her spine. As a weight lifter and martial artist, she stayed very active and would work out 5-6 days a week, but had been dealing with this pain for roughly a year. A mild burning sort of pain was relatively constant but would flare up after workouts, long periods of cooking and cleaning, prolonged work seated at a desk, or when sitting in a slouched position in bed.
During her examination, we determined that she had a full range of motion of her cervical and thoracic spine, normal mobility of her ribs and shoulders, and generally no pain when provoked with resistance and core activation. However, we were able to reproduce her symptoms with a long sit slump test—which is a neural tension test used to detect altered neurodynamics or neural tissue sensitivity—and somewhat with anterior to posterior mobilization of her lower cervical spine. The diagnosis was neural tension dysfunction of her lower cervical spine nerve root.
All that technical jargon to say, we were able to determine the root cause of a complex and specific pain with the help of a thorough examination. From there, the client came for weekly visits where we worked on slowly applying increased tension—kind of like stretching—in the long sit position and then manual therapy into the anterior to posterior direction of her lower cervical spine while in the long sit position. We saw progress every week, and after roughly five visits, the client was experiencing little to no pain, and all of her previously aggravating factors were painless or minimally painful.