There are a variety of reasons for rib pain or mid back pain. One of the common reasons is injury to your mid spine (thoracic) or one of the small joints joining the ribs to the spine. Often these problems produce only referred rib pain around the chest and not a lot of back pain. If fact you may just have chest or rib pain and no spine discomfort at all. This may affect your ability to breath and function fully. You may have strained a muscle or sprained a ligament close to the spine which has caused the problem. If the problem is coming from your spine or is soft tissue related then physiotherapy will assist. Manual therapy and an intense home program of stretches should improve the situation. See your G.P for a full assessment if this problem doesn’t settle with physiotherapy as there are other things that can cause this sort of pain, such as heart or lung problems, and they need to be picked up quickly. Your local physiotherapist should be able to advise you on this. A full assessment is necessary to ensure the diagnosis is correct. Don’t struggle with rib pain, conservative physiotherapy treatment is usually very effective.
