0:04 This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and in this video we're doing the FABER test. 0:08 This is a special or orthopedic test for the hip. 0:11 FABER being an acronym for flexion, abduction, external rotation. This is also 0:17 sometimes referred to as the Patrick's test. I'm going to have my friend Crystal 0:20 come out, she's going to help me demonstrate this test. This is not a difficult 0:24 special test to perform,, and it is definitely helpful in a clinical setting. 0:28 All you're going to do is have your your patient or client lie down, bring the 0:35 ankle of the side of the hip that you're testing over the opposite knee, so they 0:40 create this figure four position. Now you do have one text McGee, that has the foot 0:46 placement on the medial thigh, but honestly McGee is the only place I've 0:49 seen that. I think this is probably the more conventional position that you guys 0:53 will see in the research and other texts, so we'll stick with this for now. I'm 0:58 then going to face her knee, I'm going to brace the opposite ASIS all righ,t so if 1:05 I brace the opposite ASIS when she lowers this leg, it'll keep her from 1:09 flipping off the table. If you flip people off tables they don't come back. 1:12 Alright and what you guys will notice pretty quickly here if you are you're 1:16 good at your kinesiology you guys are good at your functional anatomy is, by 1:20 pushing down this way right, I have taken her into flexion, and now I'm 1:25 pushing her into abduction and external rotation of her femur, hence why this is 1:30 called the flexion, abduction, external rotation test. Alright now as far as what 1:37 is a positive versus what is a negative test, well if I slowly let her leg down, 1:43 just be like Crystal just let it fall all the way down to the table. That 1:47 might be enough alone to cause a provocation of her symptoms, which is 1:52 what we're looking for right. We want to see if this is her concordant sign, the 1:57 sign that replicates what she came in complaining about. Is this the symptoms 2:02 you were talking about, do you feel anything? You, you do feel something and 2:06 it's in the front of your hip. Alright so we already have a positive FABER. Now 2:12 if she had gotten down that far and didn't feel anything, 2:17 personally I think it would be good practice to add a little overpressure, 2:21 try to make sure they're getting down pretty close to parallel with the table 2:25 before you would say it's clear and a negative FABER test right. So I not only 2:32 want her to not feel any pain, I want her to not feel any pain with a little 2:36 overpressure before I'm going to say okay she's negative, this this isn't a problem. 2:42 Now what does a concordant sign, her symptoms being provocated in her 2:48 anterior hip with this test tell us? That's actually kind of interesting when 2:54 you look at the research. This this test has been used for one of two reasons; 2:58 it's either been used for hip issues or sacroiliac joint issue issues. Now I'm 3:04 going to say for sacroiliac joint dysfunction this test by itself is 3:08 probably not very reliable, but if she was complaining about pain in the back 3:14 of her hip, like her SI joint right, like they they start touching that spot like 3:18 that's like low back top of butt area right, then I would go okay let me follow 3:24 this up. I'm going to use this as kind of a pivot point in my evaluation. I'm going to 3:28 follow this up with my sacroiliac joint testing cluster if it's anterior hip. Now 3:36 I'm start start thinking hip issues, is this for example hip impingement, is this 3:43 some sort of small labral tear, since you know I know you guys don't know Crystal 3:47 but she she walked in here and she was not in pain while she walked so I'm 3:51 going to assume it's nothing too serious at this point all right. But if she has 3:55 anterior hip pain, impingement, trochanteric bursitis right is is a 4:02 commonly as a common diagnosis, we already said labral tears, osteoarthritis 4:09 or some sort of some sort of joint inflammation. We could maybe think of 4:14 like psoas tendinitis. Here's the problem, all of those are possible, and this test 4:22 doesn't tell me which one of those it is, and honestly when we look at our hip 4:27 tests they do a really bad job of differentiating 4:33 which pathology we have. As long as we say that this test is for hip pathology 4:40 then it is both sensitive and specific. If we try to get more specific than 4:46 generalized hip pathology, this test is sensitive but not very specific, so I 4:51 hope you guys kind of followed the logic there, and of course we'll post the 4:55 research for you guys when we post this in our articles and our courses. For now 5:01 just know conceptually what we're doing, what we're using this for. Now how I use 5:05 it in clinic is this is a wonderful quick test, remember I'm always trying to 5:12 find that one test that is there concordant sign right, it replicates 5:18 their symptoms so that I can then use it as a pretest post-test 5:22 as I start working through various modalities, and exercises and 5:28 interventions to see what's going to work for Crystal. So if I know okay 5:34 FABER tests boom, FABERs test was positive, this is a great strong 5:39 concordance sign for us. Cool all right positive, do all my techniques right, 5:45 maybe I release her psoas, maybe I release her TFL, maybe I do some glute 5:50 strengthening right. We can go through all of that lumbo-pelvic hip complex 5:54 dysfunction interventions, and then after I've done those interventions I'm going to 6:01 retest. I want to know if it worked, in fact I could even get more specific than 6:06 that, maybe I just want to try a couple things. 6:08 Maybe Crystal thinks that she's had psoas issues in the past, so we're just 6:13 going to release her psoas and then retest. And if it didn't get better then we know 6:19 that that was probably not the issue, and being that psoas release is kind of 6:23 uncomfortable probably not going to do that technique again. So there you guys 6:27 go, I'm going to demonstrate this technique one more time right. 6:31 We're going to take her into flexion by putting her opposite ankle above her 6:35 knee, I'm going to stabilize her opposite ASIS so I don't her roll off the table. I'm 6:41 going to ask her to let her knee fall towards the table, and I'm going 6:45 to add a little bit of an overpressure if I need to, and be like hey Crystal how 6:50 does that feel/ It's uncomfortable, is that the symptoms you were talking about? 6:55 Okay and where do you feel them, okay so if this is the symptoms she was talking 7:01 about when she came in, there in the front of her hip. This makes this a great 7:05 quick test for us, and because they're in the front of the hip I may not have to 7:09 follow up with my sacroiliac joint cluster, I'm going to assume that there 7:14 is some sort of hip issue going on. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope 7:19 you get use out of this test, and remember assess, address and reassess.
