Common Orthopedic Disorders - Causes & Treatment

Hi guys, I am Dr Ashwani Maichand and I am an orthopaedic surgeon based in Delhi.

Today, orthopaedic problems are very common over all age groups and patients are coming to us not only for trauma but for backache, neck pain, knee pain which are generally lifestyle problems. So today we will be talking about how to prevent them before you go to a doctor . Before you go for a surgery, can we identify these problems in advance and can we treat them ? Let's talk about that .

Backache - Generally patients come to us either with a low backache or with upper back. The upper back ache in our experience is more of a young age problem . People who are working on a computer laptop, the whole day they are sitting, they are working in offices. Generally, Orthopaedic surgeons and many general practitioners and sometimes we ourselves label them as cervical spondylosis and these patients by mistake are being treated as a patient of cervical spondylosis but they are not suffering from it. What they are suffering from is a muscle imbalance.

The muscles in our staple in our upper back, they are basically holding our upper limbs . But when we are sitting whole day long, the muscles on the anterior part of the body, the front of the body they become shorter and the muscles on the back become weak, so the whole weight of our arms and the shoulders comes on the neck and these patients present as neck pain and upper back pain instead of going for x-rays, MRI and extensive investigation. They should contact an orthopaedic surgeon where we label that these muscles are weak, these muscles are tight so we stress the tight muscle and strengthen the weak muscles . We correct their posture , we look at their workstation , their office , which type of chair they are using, at what height their system is placed , where their mouse is , where their keyboard is - all these are very basic things.

They come in Ergonomics. So it is all about changing your lifestyle, let's not adapt to the system that is given to us all. Working atmosphere rather we change the working environment according to our body so that these problems don’t bother and you don't have to visit the Orthopaedic surgeon , you don't have to take a leave so it is basically lifestyle problem.

Second, our younger generation is not active athletically. Sunlight exposure is very low and their meals are very irregular and its not a balanced diet so overall this lifestyle, It ultimately gives us pain discomfort and we rely on painkillers and we go to doctors and basically our whole system is disturbed because we are not careful about our body.

So that is the message - please take care of your body mentally as well as physically so that you never need a doctor, but unfortunately, if you are suffering from any of these conditions, you can contact us on Lybrate. We are available online and clinic as well. So now you know how to contact us.