Reduction in symptoms without a return to full function is not a true measure of success!

I am often confronted by people who say that they just had a surgical procedure and that their pain has been reduced and therefore the surgical procedure can be considered a success. I simply ask can you do everything you could before the symptoms began and before the surgical procedure? They usually look at me with an almost surprised look on their face that I could be asking such a strange question. They always so No I was told not to bend, twist, lift objects, stand for long periods of time or do anything that might increase my pain; basically do nothing. Does anybody want to consider this a success. You sought medical treatment because you were incapable of performing functional activities due to symptoms. Anything less then a full return to those functional activities must be considered a failure.

Another thing I am told after a shoulder surgery, hip or knee surgery is that the surgeon told me that I shouldn’t expect to get full return of range of motion of the joint that was worked on and therefore full return of function is not something I can expect. I would never go to a car mechanic and use them if they said that you can’t expect your car to work correctly after I “fix” it. It is insane to think that you are going to accept the premise from a surgeon that going into the surgery you are not going to get full return of function with a full resolution of symptoms. It is an obvious attempt by the surgeon to set expectations so low that when the surgery fails to achieve the goals (because the symptoms and dysfunction were actually due to a muscular cause) he can say that he told you not to expect too much and this is suppose to justify the failure of the surgery.

I would never accept a procedure or process that tells me up front it does not have the capacity to achieve the goals I intended to obtain by the accepting of the procedure or process. The story is oh so common to me. A person is convinced that surgery is the answer. The person gets the surgery and the day after appears to have no pain and is able to perform some simple functional activities. It appears the surgery is a success. The person eventually makes it home and time begins to pass. The medication starts to wear off and eventually they have to get back to life. It could be three to six months after the surgery and what do you know, the very same pain returns or pain somewhere else begins. The person returns to the surgeon who says the surgery was a success because for a short period of time there was a decrease in pain and the person can do a little bit in terms of function. But now this must be a new incident completely independent of the incident that led to the surgery. It is the scam being perpetuated over and over again with millions of people. It is sad and disheartening.

Success was never achieved by the surgery because at no point were the symptoms completely resolved and the person returned to full functional capacity. By the time they tried to perform some of their normal functional activities, symptoms were back in full swing. This is the point where the surgeon will look at the person and say I don’t know what is wrong, the surgery was a success. Here is a prescription for pain management. This is the sad progression of events that occurs when the wrong tissue is treated. Never accept any treatment as being successful regardless of who tells you it was. Be logical and recognize success is measured by functional capacity and resolution of symptoms combined; not only a reduction in symptoms.

The Yass Method focuses treatment on both indicators of success; pain resolution and return to full functional capacity. Because in more than 90% of cases of pain the cause is muscular, targeted strength training can be used to resolve the symptoms coming from strained or imbalanced muscles and return strength to the appropriate muscles so full functional capacity can be achieved. My hope is that with a better understanding of the body, people can actually achieve a higher level of function then prior to their symptom presentation. I constantly work with people and can point out that the symptoms they are experiencing always seem to be associated with a functional activity regardless of whether the symptoms are experienced during the activity or after when muscles have a chance to cool down and elicit symptoms. You are going to have to make a decision about how you want to be treated. Do you want to use a system like the existing model with no logical basis for properly diagnosing the cause of your symptoms and treatment processes with failure rates that have people scared to even try the procedures or do you want to use a method like the Yass method that is logical based, interprets the body’s presentation of symptoms to identify the tissue eliciting the symptoms, is capable of identifying all potential causes including muscular causes and has a quick and effective mechanism to resolve symptoms and return people to full functional capacity. The system will not change for you, you are going to have to change the system.

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