Canadian RMT Magazine Spring 2016 Apr. 2016 | Page 10
Ligament
Pain
Referral
Patterns
An often overlooked
source of pain
BY ROBERT LIBBEY
Over my 22 year career I’ve recognized a distinct, immediate and
ongoing problem: My clients
were complaining of pain referral patterns that didn’t seem
to match up with the standard
trigger points, dermatome or
sclerotome patterns.
For years I researched
scientific journals
and resources, while
continually charting
the referral patterns described to
me by my clients.
What I discovered was that
the ligamentous
articular system was the source of
their pain.
In the 1950’s George Hackett, MD
and Gustav Hemwal, MD researched
ligamentous injuries and their pain
referral patterns. Their almost 40+
years of combined research and
treatments involved almost 20,000
clients worldwide and culminated
in the publication of the book Ligament and Tendon Relaxation Treatment by Prolotherapy in which
ligament pain referral patterns were
documented for the first time.
Current research is confirming
that ligamentous articular structures/tissues do in fact refer pain
in these characteristic patterns. It’s
one of the most unrecognized and
overlooked sources of pain.
Research from the Bone and Joint
Journal documents that within the
femoral acetabular labrum, “painassociated free nerve ending expression was located showing characteristic distribution profiles of nociceptive and pain-related nerve fibres,
10
Canadian rmt
Robert_Feature2.indd 10
2016-03-02 9:14 PM