SFMA is short for Selective Functional Movement Assessment and while I realize this is a mouthful, it stands for a successful new tool we have implemented here in the clinic. A physical therapist by the name of Gray Cook came up with this assessment and simply put, it’s a way for us to assess a patient’s movement. It is now a regular part of our examination of a patient and we take you through a series of seven body movement tests which will reveal your functional patterns of movement. From there we can determine where you have some mobility or stability issues.
This assessment serves as a flowchart which can take us in different directions. We can determine if you are weight bearing or have some thoracic spine issues. When we lay you down, we may discover a different path we should take as body movement can change when a patient goes from standing to laying.
Because I am a huge fan of the art of diagnosis, I’m also a firm believer in a thorough examination. We see patients frequently who have left another doctor and still have no idea what their diagnosis is. We at Tulsa Spine & Rehab want to reach a firm diagnosis and want to discover the source of your pain, whether it’s in the low back, a disc issue or something else. We need to find out if it’s serious enough that we should give you a referral or if, through the use of SFMA, it’s something we can treat. We can also use imaging such as MRI’s or x-rays if needed, but SFMA can give us an idea of a patient’s limitations in other parts of the body as it relates to low back pain.
Low back pain is the number one reason patients see us and making a determination of where that pain is generating from is of utmost importance. Sometimes SFMA may show limitations in mobility and many times we will be working on the upper back and hips to increase mobility to relieve some of that load on the low back.
What is Involved with the Seven Full Body Movements?
The SFMA involves an examination of basic movement patterns such as how you flex forward, how you extend, how you rotate and how you squat. We want to know if a patient feels pain and if they do, we stop right there. At that point, we dig deeper into your medical background to determine if there is something that may need a work-up. As an example, many people lack the ability to bend over and touch their toes, so the first thought is this is caused by tight hamstrings. In fact, this can be caused by poor hip mobility, a mechanical barrier or poor core stability throughout your trunk. When I have a patient perform this movement, many times I’m checking for quality of movement. When I lay them down and have them do a single leg raise, all of a sudden they can bring it up 80 degrees. This takes the hamstring theory completely out of the picture since they can do it laying down.
This is just one example of how the SFMA can steer us in whatever direction is necessary for an accurate diagnosis. When the patient’s chief complaint is low back pain, SFMA serves as one more tool for discovering if they have other limitations in other body parts.
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