There are some fantastic doctors out there trained to recognize whiplash and who know when to refer to a soft-tissue specialist.  However, there are also many patients who still fall through the cracks.  Why?

Most MD physicians received very specialized and focused training on organ systems, systemic diseases, and the use of drugs and surgery to treat these conditions.  However, training about the muscles, joints, and ligaments is still limited to orthopedic and neurologic conditions conditions which require surgery.   What does this mean for those patients with soft-tissue injuries? 

If we look at the number of people injured in car accidents and their diagnosis, only a very small percentage have injuries (such as severe multitrauma or fractures) that the MD medical community has been trained to treat.  I know this because after attending some of the best MD training programs in the country, I was ill-prepared to treat most of the soft-tissue injuries I was asked to see.  It took years of weekend courses learning from osteopaths, physical therapists, alternative practitioners, and chiropractors before I started to know how to treat these patients.   There are MD's out there (more in the last few years, especially amongst physical medicine and rehabilitation doctors) who have started to educate themselves about soft-tissue injuries, but they are still few and far between.  My hope is that projects like this web-site will get the word out to MD's and improve the quality of care for all patients with soft-tissue injuries.

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