Sciatica diagnostic eclecticism happens frequently, spanning a wide range of suspected causative processes. This occurrence is similar to many other back pain diagnoses that are commonly substituted for one another when treatment fails to bring about relief. In fact, doctors who treat back pain are well known to revise diagnoses several times in order to further their money-making treatment agenda.
What is diagnostic eclecticism? What consequences does it cause to you and your health? Why does it occur so often in the dorsalgia care industry? These questions form the basis of this vital essay.
This discussion breaks down diagnostic eclecticism in a way that is understandable and helpful for anyone who suffers from sciatica.
Sciatica Diagnostic Eclecticism Experiences
How many diagnoses have you had to explain your pain? Maybe you are still on your first. You might be pursuing care right now for this diagnosis and having poor results. You may have already tried several conservative treatments without enjoying complete or lasting relief. You are probably now considering or planning an escalation of treatment into the moderate or surgical realm. This would make you a typical novice sciatica sufferer.
Maybe you already had surgery or maybe more than 1 procedure. You still have pain. This may have caused a rift between you and your doctor after many months or years of patience on your part while treatment failed to provide relief. Maybe you have the patience of a saint and are sticking with your doctor while they make boatloads of cash off your suffering, even though their therapeutic results are abysmal.
What is Diagnostic Eclecticism?
Diagnostic eclecticism means that different care providers will diagnose the pain as coming from different causes. An orthopedist might suspect and pronounce a herniated disc as the cause. A neurologist might suspect scar tissue on the nerves from a previous surgery as the source. A chiropractor may claim that the piriformis muscle is clamping down on your sciatic nerve, causing your pain. A physical therapist might implicate your sacroiliac joint as the problem. All of these doctors can and do provide “evidence” of pathology using diagnostic imaging technology. Who do you believe?
In many cases, the same doctor can use diagnostic eclecticism to explain away their own mistakes… They will treat you for one diagnosis until you begin to question their care based on poor therapeutic outcome. Then, they will revise the diagnosis, making sure to cast no blame on themselves for misdiagnosis the entire time:
“I successfully treated the bulging disc and then the arthritis, but NOW, your posture has changed and your sacroiliac joint is continuing the pain and require treatment”.
This is single party diagnostic eclecticism and occurs more and more with patients financing doctors for years as they enjoy luxury lifestyles without providing any successful care whatsoever.
To put it simply, diagnostic eclecticism is when more than 1 care provider pronounces a different diagnosis to explain the same symptoms (based on “evidence”) or when a single or multiple doctors change their diagnosis to explain poor therapeutic results. This is the way the modern medical system works and with the addition of millions of complementary care providers onboard for the money show, patients never really know for sure what or who to believe when it comes to their diagnosis.
Sciatica Diagnostic Eclecticism Issues
The reason care providers can get away with this seeming crime is simple: The medical “evidence” presented to justify a diagnosis is largely smoke and mirrors. Most structural change is not pathological and not causative for pain. This has been well-established in the healthcare sciences, but remains a point of contention in legal circles, since lawmakers, judges and juries are NOT scientists in the healthcare system. In essence, doctors can do largely what they like when it comes to diagnosis, as it is a subjective science and can be justified with virtually any anatomical change that can be noted, regardless of the relevance or symptomatic correlation of the structural change in question.
If you have already read this far, there is hope for you. You know something is not right and you feel like you have received a bad deal. The truth is, YOU DID. Here is some further reading that you MUST DO RIGHT NOW in order to appreciate the full scope of this topic:
Good luck! We are here to help with free education and advocacy for life.
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