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WELCOME TO WIKIMSK
The New Zealand Musculoskeletal Medicine Wiki
Nau mai, haere mai! This website is a learning resource that is primarily designed for Musculoskeletal Medicine training in New Zealand. It also aims to be useful for GPs, other doctors, and medical students. It is not written for patients but they are welcome to read the articles. Click on a body region on the skeleton or a portal below to get started.
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Featured Wiki Article for 1 June 2025

Scapular Winging

Scapular winging is a dysfunction involving the stabilizing muscles of the scapula, resulting in imbalance, abnormal motion, and a prominence of the medial or vertebral border of the scapula. This may or may not be symptomatic.

Diagnosis is made clinically with the presence of excessive medializing scapular retraction (medial winging) or excessive lateralizing scapular protraction (lateral winging). The most common cause is long thoracic nerve palsy leading to serratus anterior weakness, often due to neuralgic amyotrophy. The second most common cause is spinal accessory nerve palsy causing trapezius weakness, which is frequently overlooked.

Treatment is generally observation, physical therapy, and activity modification. Operative intervention may be considered depending on the etiology of the winging and the presence of an identifiable neurological lesion.

- Read More
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Featured Open Access Journal Article for 1 June 2025

Education about pain and experience with cognitive-based interventions do not reduce healthcare professionals’ chronic pain

Asaf Weisman et al. PeerJ. May 2025

ABSTRACT - This cross-sectional study investigated whether healthcare professionals (HCPs) with chronic pain (HCPs+CP) who are familiar with pain neuroscience education (PNE) and cognitive-based interventions (such as CBT, ACT, and mindfulness) experience less pain and improved quality of life. An anonymous online questionnaire was distributed to 550 HCPs (319 healthy, 231 with chronic pain) internationally. The results showed that pain intensity did not significantly differ between HCPs+CP with primary versus secondary chronic pain, nor did it negatively correlate with their knowledge or experience with cognitive-based interventions. While HCPs+CP initially showed slightly lower quality of life scores than healthy HCPs, these differences became non-significant when only those familiar with the interventions were compared. Notably, among healthy HCPs who had recovered from chronic pain, only 11% attributed their recovery to cognitive-based interventions, with most citing physical therapy or spontaneous recovery. The study concludes that, for HCPs with chronic pain, education about pain and experience with cognitive-based interventions do not correlate with reduced pain intensity, though quality of life may be comparable to healthy colleagues, challenging current theoretical models for these interventions.

EDITOR'S COMMENT - This is a very unique angle to explore the efficacy of therapeutic pain neuroscience education. The results fit with what I see clinically - it can improve function but has no effect on pain intensity. Patients seek an understanding of why they are sore, but this is usually because there is the implication (often misguided) that if they know the reason then it can be "fixed." Pain neuroscience education gives an explanation but it doesn't provide a way forward for meaningfully reducing pain.

HCP CP pain neuroscience - Weisman 2025.pdf
Full Text - 2.09 MB (f)

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I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

— The Hippocratic Oath: Modern Version, Lasagna 1964