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Member
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: NE PA
Posts: 165
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Member
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: NE PA
Posts: 165
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Thoracic Outlet Syndrome: Fact or Fiction? from Whiplash 101
Recent article from Whiplash 101
Thoracic Outlet Syndrome: Fact or Fiction? by Christopher J. Centeno, M.D.
Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. The diagnosis inspires fear in the hearts of insurance adjusters and confusion for most medical providers. Thoracic outlet, or TOS as its sometimes known, seems to have gotten this reputation because of its sometimes dubious surgical roots. The surgeries were expensive, carried significant risk for patients, and rarely seemed to help. However, TOS has another side, one with no less controversy, but some basis in science and without the baggage of its surgical past.
The diagnosis of TOS first shows up in the medical literature in the 1960s. The syndrome gets its name from a constellation of symptoms that all originate from compression of an area where the shoulder meets the rib cage, dubbed the Thoracic Outlet. This area is in the front of the neck, between the shoulder and the chest, under the collarbone and above the ribs. If you think of this area as a house, the floor would be the upper rib cage, the walls would be the scalene muscles, and the roof would be the collarbone or clavicle. Since major nerves and vascular structures pass through this space on their way to the upper extremity, any compression can cause weakness, numbness, and vascular changes in the upper extremity…continued at
http://www.whiplash101.com/thoracic_outlet_syndrome.htm
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~ Carly
Advanced Glaucoma~RA/secondary fibromyalgia~Cervical Radiculapathy post ACDF 5-6~TOS
"What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other." ~ George Eliot
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