Dealing with some sort of musculo-skeletal (msk) pain is a common issue for most people, in fact low back pain alone is one of the most common issues people deal with and upwards of 80% of people will experience it at some point in their lives. That doesn’t even begin to mention some other common aches and pains such as neck, shoulder or knee pain.
The good news about most msk issues is that they do tend to self-resolve, or just simply get better with some time. Of course that doesn’t happen all the time and pain is still common. Pain can also be unique for each individual, some activities may flare up symptoms and some may not, but the pain will still linger.
So with so many unknowns about pain, how do you know when you should see a provider? That's a great question and one that I get quite often, and in fact I see a lot of patients who have been dealing with a specific injury or pain for a while but were hesitant to go see someone because they were unsure if it was necessary. Although there is no perfect answer for this question, I have come up with a few criteria that should help give some guidance to most folks.
First I’d like to just say that there really isn’t any issue that you can’t ask your provider about, which is my first point. If you are dealing with a pain that concerns you, no matter how long or how intense the pain may be, you are more than welcome to ask your provider about it. Now, keep in mind that when you ask your healthcare provider about your pain they should ask a few follow up questions and maybe do a test or two to reassure you and themselves that what you are dealing with either is something to be discussed further or something you can let self-resolve with time. If you ask your healthcare provider about your pain and you feel as if you weren’t heard or listened to, you should absolutely look for a second opinion. Now that starts to get into other topics which I’ll discuss in other posts but the point is, there isn’t a wrong time to ask about a pain you have and when asking about it you want to make sure the provider listens.
Another criteria that can be helpful is the time you’ve been dealing with the injury. Now there are a few sub-points with this one depending on the injury. If you sustained an acute (recent) injury and there was some immediate pain such as a pop in the shoulder or low back, then I would recommend seeking help from a provider sooner rather than later. In these cases it's best to rule out fractures, tears or other serious injuries that might require more medical care. That is probably pretty obvious but then again, there have been multiple occasions when someone tweaked something and decided to put off getting it looked at for longer than necessary.
Now a more common scenario that most people encounter is when pain comes on slowly over time maybe from overuse or just possibly out of the blue, in these scenarios I like to tell people that if the pain itself is tolerable they should wait about a week to see if the pain starts to resolve on its own before consulting a provider. More often than not, pain that slowly comes on like this will likely start to fade if given enough time, so being patient and letting your body do its thing might be all you need to do. However if the pain lingers and sticks around for multiple weeks or like previously mentioned you are just concerned about it, I would suggest getting it looked at to see if you can get some answers.
One of the last criteria is overall function, even if the pain is mild or hasn’t been there long or you just aren’t concerned about it, if you start to lose some ability to do your daily activities I would suggest getting your pain looked at. Again, I’ve seen many patients who have dealt with things like low back pain or shoulder pain for months if not years and then finally came in to get care and had they come in sooner they likely would have either had better outcomes or just had better quality of life from getting a few pointers on how to manage their pain.
One last point I do want to make which I previously mentioned (and will talk in more detail on soon) is that when you go to your health care provider to ask about your pain you should feel as if they listened to you and did a thorough history and evaluation of your issue. If you felt they were short or didn’t listen to your full story about your pain then I would recommend seeking a second opinion.