Is the MRI M-R-wrong? | Coastal Health and Fitness Blog

An advantage of racing and training as I have over the past 20 years is I have accumulated quite a few interesting injuries: sprains, strains, tears, contusions, etc. With all of these injuries came the experience of the injury process: the diagnosis, prognosis and therapy.

One of the things I learned is the fallibility of the diagnostic process. Doctors can be and often are wrong. Therapists can be and often are wrong. Even imaging modalities can be and often are wrong (they can both be interpreted incorrectly and can even demonstrate conditions that do not exist in the patient).

THIS STUDY took 236 people of normal body weight (not overweight or underweight) and without any knee pain, and each defined as ?active? in their exercise habits. It? gave each of them an MRI of the knee and came back with a surprising result: 1/2 of them had some degree of meniscal damage, 3/4 had cartilage damage, nearly half had bone marrow edema and 1/6 had ligament damage.

It wasn?t surprising to the researchers that they were able to see damaged structures. What was surprising was that NONE of these study participants had any symptoms, whatsoever.

Personally, I?m not too surprised by this data. I regularly warn patients?before I send them off to an MRI, x-ray or diagnostic ultrasound?that the images may show a problem, but that problem is not necessarily responsible for the patient?s symptoms. I have seen patients with intense pain and a perfect MRI, and patients with no pain and a hideous MRI.

I?m not saying avoid imaging. Instead, take the data that you get as just one piece of the diagnostic puzzle. An MRI or x-ray image is not the end-all be-all that you might think of it as. Whatever you do, do not consider yourself ?disabled? based upon the images you see. It?s very easy to become depressed and overwhelmed when you are confronted with a tear, degeneration, edema, etc.

Source: http://blog.coastalhealthandfitness.com/is-the-mri-m-r-wrong/

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