Any spare ribs?....
I’m just back from holiday on a remote Scottish island, one of my favourite places. On these islands I quite often see bones lying around. They are nearly always sheep bones: vertebrae and ribs. This got me thinking about something that one of my colleagues said to me a little while ago: He said ‘I saw a patient recently who had some rib cage pain. His ribs were ‘out’.
This is something that I've never really understood, because the patient's pain had come on for no obvious reason. In this video, I run through some different causes (below), about what might cause, in my opinion, pain in a patient's rib-cage. The list isn’t exhaustive, but this is what I address in the video:
Fractures
Shingles
Referred pain from the cervical spine
Cervical myelopathy
Chest infection/pathology
Gallstones
Liver pathology
Splenic pathology
Reflux
Cardiac pain
Pericarditis
As you will see in the video, it’s important for us to think about the location of the pain, the mode of onset and if there are mechanical factors.
Remember: Our diagnosis should always include an answer to the ‘WHY’ question!
I am a chiropractor and sonographer. I also mentor colleagues to help them become the clinicians that they want to become. Find out more here.
