Meet The Spine Team

The Spine Team provides care for the individual

Together Gordon and Annette bring a wealth of experience, expertise and enthusiasm to the treatment and management of back pain and other musculo-skeletal problems, problems that cause so much pain and disability.

At the Spine Team we will consider your particular problem in the context your unique situation, using the ‘Patient Centred Model’. This means not just treatment but listening to you, understanding your life, explaining your problem to you and helping you change things, not just to get you better but to keep you better, this is called ‘Integrated Care’.

Deborah will support any administrative issues and can be contacted on 01256 466666 from 10am to 2.45pm Monday to Thursday or emailed on deborah.white@spineteam.co.uk.

Musculo-skeletal (MSK) conditions

Sometimes a painful episode of back pain or other MSK pain stands alone, if it is a first episode and the reason for the problem is obvious we can use the ‘injury model’ for diagnosis and treatment. However most episodes of back pain and some other MSK conditions appear for no good reason, either suddenly or gradually, or have a tendency to re-occur without provocation or persist beyond reasonable healing time.

Research shows conclusively that the ‘injury model’ cannot be used for these problems and it is better to use the ‘patient centred model’ to identify what in that particular patient, or their life, predisposes them to the problem and what can be done to get rid of it. In almost all cases this means that treatment alone will not work and multiple approaches are needed, so ‘Integrated Care’. If this sounds complicated do not worry, we are experts in figuring out the best route for you.

Pain

Pain, apart from being unpleasant is useful, up to a point. It is the most common complaint we see. The pain may tell us where and when the problem originated and sometimes why, this is called ‘Acute Pain’. Pain lasting longer is called ‘Chronic Pain’. Quite often longer term problems lead to short term painful phases and while that is when a patient will consult us the pain at the time may not tell us when and why the problem started, this kind of ‘recurrent’ pain also needs treating as a chronic problem.

Acute pain

Acute pain (short term pain) is the response of the brain to a damage report (nociception) coming from an ‘injured’ area. It is supposed to trigger a reaction to help you limit the damage, stop whatever caused it, and learn from the experience. Healing should then take place and the pain should recede as the damage is repaired.

Chronic pain

Chronic pain (long term pain) is considered to be pain lasting more than six, eight or 13 weeks (depending on the study parameters). However it is better to think of it as pain lasting beyond the time it would take for an injury to heal. As this happens the brain starts to process the pain in a different way, effectively it begins to regard the pain as the problem, and goes looking for answers where there are none, increasing the sensitivity you feel as time goes on.

Chronic pain is very common in back pain and treating the reason believed to have started the problem or investigating in the hope of finding a hidden reason leads to disappointment or worse still invasive treatment that is not needed.

If you are in a situation where your pain is lasting beyond your expectation then the Spine Team can help you. The ‘patient centred model’ is designed to have ‘you’ and your life at the centre and while we recognise the ‘problem’ it is changing how it developed and how you respond to it that leads to improvement.

Management and Maintenance

Some patients respond well to care and only need it when they are bad but others suffer an attritional effect in their normal lives.  This may be due to over work or postural fatigue. For those that need regular care we provide structure management programmes, including treatment, exercises and advice to keep you well and keep you in control.