Do I Need A Scan Before I See A Physiotherapist?

Physiotherapists are first contact practitioners, meaning you don’t need a doctor’s referral to see a physiotherapist.

Physiotherapists are trained to assess your condition, diagnose the problem, and help you understand what’s wrong.

Physiotherapists use their clinical reasoning skills to determine if a referral to a doctor or imaging is needed, so it is completely safe to commence treatment with a physiotherapist before you seek further investigations.

Seeing a physiotherapist first may reduce the need for unnecessary imaging. It is also important to remember that imaging findings don’t always correlate well with the symptom’s individuals experience, this means imaging is not always accurate in telling us which structure is causing pain. For example, two thirds of people with full thickness rotator cuff tears on imaging are asymptomatic. Meaning imaging findings can be present in the absence of pain.

On the flip side, there are individuals in the population with no significant findings on imaging who are in severe pain. Why is this? The simple answer, pain is complicated! It is not determined by changes in structure alone, it is influenced by our beliefs, prior experiences, age, sleep, nutrition, weight, sex, stress levels, socioeconomic status, occupation, physical activity levels, smoking history, the list goes on.

Physiotherapists will treat the person and the symptoms in front of them, rather that the results of a scan.