First Chiropractic provides chiropractic re-evaluations for your condition. Your doctor of chiropractic will make specific recommendations as to your future care. Such recommendations will be based upon the objective physical findings noted in the re-evaluation, as well as your doctor’s past experience with similar cases. Oftentimes – but not necessarily – your doctor may elect to change or alter your treatment program to fit the progress that you are making. Your doctor may decide to change the interval or frequency of your office visits according to your progress. Or, your doctor may decide to start using a different technique that is more suitable for your changing condition. Also, your doctor may counsel you on other treatment procedures, such as good dietary habits, exercises or spinal rehabilitation.
Regularly scheduled re-evaluations help your doctor to keep up-to-date on your condition and increase the effectiveness of your treatment program. Your part in the re-evaluation process is to notify the doctor of any and all changes that you may be experiencing throughout your treatment program. This information is helpful, with the results of the re-evaluations, in formulating your doctor’s decision on your future care.
Understanding your health problem is crucial to the overall success of your treatment program. Ask questions as often as you would until you feel confident about your treatment program and the progress you are making. Following your doctor’s recommendations is certainly vital to your overall success.
Only through these re-evaluation procedures, and keeping the lines of communication open with your doctor, will your current state of health be known.
Our original treatment program was based upon the diagnostic findings and case history that were presented on your first visit. According to those findings, your doctor of chiropractic set up a treatment program tailored to your needs. During the course of your treatment program you will most likely be scheduled for a re-evaluation. At that time, your doctor of chiropractic will evaluate the progress that is being made and either continue, intensify or reduce your present health care program, or possibly make special specific recommendations on your future care.
Since patients tend to concern themselves only with the symptoms of their disease, they might believe that if they are feeling better, the problem must be gone. That’s usually not true. The same diagnostic procedures that were performed initially will most likely need to be repeated to determine what type of real (objective) changes are taking place. Pain is not the best indicator of the progress you are making, since the nature of pain is such that it comes and goes. Pain is also usually the last thing to appear in a poor health condition and generally the first thing to disappear as health care begins.
If you are presently pain-free, or experiencing relief, it does not mean the problem has been corrected. Only through objective physical findings, like those evidenced by your re-evaluation results, can your progress be accurately gauged. This is why re-evaluations are such an important part of your health care program. Your treatment program was designed to do more than simply get you out of pain. It was designed to strengthen, stabilize, and possibly even correct the underlying problem.