Short Introduction to CBCT Analysis

This is a Cone Beam CT scan.

It is slowly, but surely taking the place of regular X-rays.

The first thing I look at is this 3 dimensional  view.

This gives me a good overview of what I am looking at and what to look for. I do my actual analysis on the 2-D views that you see on the right side of the screen. But this gives me some good overall information. I can look at the discs and the disc spaces, I can look at the holes between the bones where the nerves come out. I can look straight down from the brain through the cervical spine just to see what is going on there. So that's always what I start with first, just to get an overall view of what is going on.

Then I move to the 2-D views.

The first thing I do is I create these red lines that kind of square up the skull so I have some reference points. On this picture here, the head is pretty level, but on this picture here you can see there's quite a bit of tilt towards the right.

We want to look at the top joint in the spine where the skull sits on the top bone in the neck. Looking at the joints here on each side, and we'll take some measurements of it.

I'll just do a real quick version of it. We spend a bit more time. There's a bit more of a process to it when we are really analyzing something. It's about the same on both sides on this particular patient.

Then we're going to look at each side particularly.

So I want to look right down the outside edge of that joint there. We're going to see that over here. And we need to change the angle a little bit so we can see right down the joint. Alright, now it clears out. Looks pretty even there. The outside edge of the atlas and the outside edge of the occipital condyle, or the bottom of the skull. Let's take a look at the other side.

Overall this process takes about an hour.

Now if you look here, you can actually see a very small misalignment there. On this particular patient the atlas, or the bone underneath the skull, has moved a little bit to the left and forward of the actual skull itself and gotten stuck.

So we have to design an adjustment to slide the bone right back down there.

One of the tools that help us do that and again I would be a little more careful when I am actually analyzing it. We're going to look at what the angle is there so we know how to place our body in comparison to the patient to slide the bone back into place without twisting and popping. There is a lot of other things that we analyze...

What is a screening and why is it important?[Video]

The screening is important because we don’t often know if we have injured the spine or how bad it is.

So we want to check those see even if the symptoms aren’t very bad or if you have no symptoms whatsoever that you find out in 30 years that now you have a heart problem because a nerve that is coming from your spine that’s going to your heart isn’t working like it should.

In the screening, there are several components.

The first is just you and me talking about what the issues are and what brought you to my office.

The second is the testing phase, where we determine whether it is something I can help you with or not. And that is divided up into a neurological component and a measurement component. The neurological component has two tests.

The first one is measuring the temperature of your skin on either side of the spine just in the neck region. This gives me some information about the nervous system and how it is functioning.

The second is having you lay on your stomach or on your back and looking at the length of your legs which may sound kind of strange. Leg length changes the tension of the muscles all the way down the spine, causes the pelvis to twist a little bit. If the pelvis twists a little bit, then the hips are not going to be level, and if the hips are not level, then one leg is going to look and act like it is shorter than the other. That can cause other problems.

And then we run some tests from there to determine what is causing that short leg. Is it a neurological problem in the spine, and if so, where in the spine is it? After we do those two tests, then we do a posture measurement. There can be about three different factors that can determine how you are standing and what’s correct for you.

Then we’ll sit down and talk about the findings. And we’ll say “you’re doing fine,” especially if ti’s just a checkup and you don’t have any symptoms. But if I do find something, at that point, we’ll go over what the process is. What’s the next step? What do we need to do to fix it? How long is this going to take? How much will it cost as far as we can tell at this time?

I recommend that screenings start at birth and then proceeds throughout life

It doesn’t mean you have to see the chiropractor a lot. We want to make sure that especially as the child grows, they are growing straight. And even as adults as we get involved in sports and we get into car accidents that it doesn’t cause permanent damage that you may not really realize until 20 or 30 years after the fact.