damage is damage, pain is pain ,the two don't necessarily follow. Neither does OA with disability, disc disease with chronic spinal pain or tendon irritation with "shear forces ".
Step one. ask and consider the question , could the pain be referred ?. Clearing tests are useless.
Best to follow a protocol that considers and tests the proposal, that a hypomobile spinal joint(s) that is/are neurologically relevant, could , by systematically and enthusiastically eliminating that joint/nerve from the picture by treatment, show by hindsight, that it contributed to the pain/dysfunction.( or it did not )
Step two. If relevance is proven in this way, continue with protocol one.
Step three . if no change after mobs, move to a "local " strategy .

OK , well I have simplified the business a lot. However, in my own considerations of MSK disorders, REGARDLESS of any medical diagnosis, I invariably find , that no one has considered the prospect of referred events at all. Certainly not in a useful way.
My point then , is , if not for this protocol , many go on to continue to suffer needlessly from perfectly fixable pain/dysfunction.
The list of "diagnoses " is quite long.
The prospect of referred events is much higher than many believe.
ten to fifteen minutes is all it takes to perform step one. well worth the effort.