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...

Arthritis & Upper Cervical Chiropractic Care | Dr. Gordon Elder

Dr. Gordon D. Elder of The Blair Chiropractic Clinic, Lubbock Texas explains how Upper Cervical Chiropractic can help reduce Arthritic pain.

Arthritis can come in many forms but the most common kind is caused by the body’s joints wearing away for one reason or another. Many times, this condition is caused by poor alignment, which makes a lot of sense; if your alignment is wrong, your joints are going to wear wrong.  This causes the inflammation, burning sensation, and pain that’s usually associated with arthritis.  This does not apply to ALL types of arthritis – for example, autoimmune arthritities like Rheumatoid arthritis is caused by a part of the body eating or disintegrating its own joints, which is a different issue.  At this time, we want to focus on arthritis that’s caused by cervical misalignment – which can be repaired over time with proper Upper Cervical Chiropractic Care.

Regardless of the type of arthritis you may have, chances are you’ve had the problem for much longer than your symptoms have been showing. Another one of the challenges associated with treating arthritis is that the problem doesn’t ‘start’ when the joints get hot and swollen.  These symptoms occur after years of the joint being worn down, which is what is causing the irritation and inflammation in the joint.  For example, many of our patients are amazed because we can look at an X-Ray of the neck and ask, “What happened to you 20 (or 50) years ago?”  We can even point out where the trauma occurred, since the X-Ray shows us where the arthritis is developed.

Contrary to what many people believe, having arthritis does NOT mean you’re old; it simply means you have an “old problem. We’ve seen relatively young patients with significant arthritis in their joints, and we’ve seen elderly patients who had virtually no arthritis until, for example, a spinal injury occurs. In these cases, when we fix the patient’s neck and take the pressure off the brainstem, their body starts to move back into the proper position. As this happens, we can relieve the pressure on those irritated joints.

Unfortunately, if the injury or damage has been there for a long time, some of the arthritic symptoms may be permanent. However, when a patient’s body is healthy enough to straighten things out, it has the ability to “work around” the damage. In many cases, people with arthritis can live fairly normal lives, not having to think about the pain of the arthritis because everything else is functioning properly and the body can compensate for the damage.  Upper cervical alignment can play a big role in this as well, because of how closely this area of the neck is associated with total body alignment.

If you or someone you know is experiencing severe pain from arthritis, we would love to see how we can help. Upper Cervical Chiropractic care has shown tremendous success in helping patients get back to normal, without being burdened by arthritic pain.  At Blair Chiropractic Clinic in Lubbock, TX , we want to fix the underlyingnproblem you’re having.  Our motto is “Find it, fix it, then leave it alone”.  Visit www.blairclinic.com or call (806) 747-2735 today to speak with a member of our staff about scheduling a screening.