Dr. Craig Best

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Vancouver, BC
Dr. Craig Best

Dr. Best is an interventional spine, sports, and regenerative medicine physician.

He is skilled in diagnosing and treating your acute and chronic pain issues without need for surgery.

08/13/2023

Epidemiology must be kept in mind when diagnosing and treating spine and musculoskeletal pain conditions. It’s not to say that piriformis syndrome should be forgotten, but let’s rule in or rule out the lumbosacral spine before honing in on a small deep hip rotator.

08/04/2023

Orthobiologics certainly have the ability to help patients with spine and musculoskeletal pain conditions, but healthcare professionals claiming they can actually grow new cartilage, ligament, tendon, etc. is just plain false!

07/28/2023

Lumbar epidural steroid injections performed with fluoroscopic-guidance by highly trained interventional pain medicine physicians have demonstrated a variety of benefits in patients with lumbar radicular pain due to due herniation

07/27/2023

If weekly sessions 1-46 of IMS or trigger point injections haven’t gotten you back in the game, do we think session #47 is gonna be the big breakthrough?! 😬🤨🤔

07/21/2023

As an interventional physiatrist/Pain Medicine doc, imaging is very important and useful in my practice. It’s useful to rule out super serious issues such as fractures, infections, and malignancies. It may be important to help me plan an injection. Finally, in some cases, imaging may help confirm a suspected diagnosis. However, for certain causes of spine pain, it doesn’t play much of a role in diagnosis. Facet joint pain is one of those conditions.

07/16/2023

If the 27 sessions of passive modalities aren’t getting you to where you want to be with neck and upper back pain, it may be worth a different approach 🤔

07/13/2023

MCAT ✅
COMLEX 1 ✅
COMLEX 2 CE ✅
COMLEX 2 PE ✅
COMLEX 3 ✅
USMLE Step 1 ✅
USMLE Step 2 CK ✅
ABPM&R PM&R ✅
ABPM&R Pain Medicine ✅

And last but certainly not least…

Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada’s PM&R exam ✅

I’ve tackled a lot of VERY challenging and important exams along the way, but none presented a tougher, more daunting task than the RCPSC PM&R board certification exam. This was the last piece of the puzzle in making the move home to Canada. I’ve practiced a fairly narrow aspect of PM&R since finishing fellowship, so trying to re-learn large volumes of information that I hadn’t thought about since completing residency in 2015 was no small task but I knew this was one of the hoops I’d have to jump through when the decision was made to move to Vancouver. Huge thanks to my friends and colleagues for your support. Shout out to 49th Parallel and Delany’s in North Vancouver for keeping me caffeinated and supplying my brain with large quantities of glucose in the form of baked goods while studying ☕️🍩🥐 The North Vancouver Public Library in Edgemont which became my primary studying location/second home in the home stretch of exam preparation 📚🤓 Most of all, my family and especially my incredible wife for doing everything in their power to take care of LIFE and allowing me the time and space required to study for and pass what became the most important exam I’d ever take! I will once again retire from test taking and look forward to providing care to the people of British Columbia for the rest of my career! Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada - your board certification exam is SO much more challenging than I could have imagined when I decided to go down this path and I will not miss you at all… though I’ll definitely continue to hit up 49th Parallel and Delany’s for iced coffee and baked goods!

Reasons for all the studying/stress on slides 2 and 3🌲🌊👦🏼

07/12/2023

Radiofrequency ablation of medial branch nerves is an excellent option for management of facet joint pain! When performed with good technique after solidifying the diagnosis with diagnostic blocks, RFA can provide substantial and long lasting improvement in neck or back pain.

07/10/2023

Lifelong Learning • After 13 years of post-secondary education and training, you’d think I’d be tired of learning but I can’t help myself 🤓🤣 I recently attended a course in Portland, OR put on by the Spine Intervention Society. When I attended similar courses as a resident and fellow, I felt like I was drinking from a fire hose. Seven years out from training, I’m moreso looking to get a little tip here or there to continue to improve my knowledge base and skill set even incrementally. Every little bit helps and will hopefully lead to better and better patient care along the way!

PS - I never liked sitting up front in lectures 🤭

07/07/2023

Everyone’s going to get arthritic changes of their facet and sacroiliac joints, but not everyone will deal with chronic low back pain. Determining whether or not they could be causing back pain is not typically based on X-ray, CT, or MRI findings. Diagnosis of low back pain can be very nuanced and how healthcare professionals discuss these test findings with patients can have significant placebo or nocebo effects. Tread cautiously!

07/06/2023

Little more writing and less photos and videos perhaps? Will give it a try! Give me a follow on for more discussion of spine, sports, and pain medicine topics!

02/24/2023

Teaching spine anatomy to the next generation of interventional physiatrists using the spine segment of a whale to demonstrate 🐋

Address

Vancouver, BC

Telephone

+16042604481

Website

http://drcraigbest.com/

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