Although Back Pain Improves with Care, it Often Persists for a Year or Longer

Market Harborough Chiropractor back pain treatment
Written By davecasey6719@gmail.com, On August 12, 2013

Although Back Pain Improves With Care, It Often Persists For A Year Or Longer

For people receiving health care for acute and persistent low-back pain, symptoms will improve significantly in the first six weeks, but pain and disability may linger even after one year, states a large study published inCMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). This contradicts the long standing belief that back pain will recover in six weeks. For decades this misconception has underpinned the treatment of back pain suggesting that is a simple back sprain and not a chronic deconditioning syndrome.

Low-back pain is a common condition that results in significant health care costs, disability and absenteeism in workplaces. However, there are differing views on how quickly and how completely people recover from this condition. Traditional approaches seem to prolong suffering and increase the overall financial burden associated with back pain.

Researchers from Australia and Brazil examined data from 33 studies (11 166 participants) to understand the clinical course of pain and disability in people receiving care for low-back pain. The study looked at more studies than previous reviews, which allowed more precise estimates of the clinical course of acute low-back pain as well as persistent low-back pain.

At one year, the patients who initially presented with acute low-back pain still experienced some pain and disability, the typical improvement in their pain was only about 50%.

It is great that people improve with care, but arguably there is room to do better, particularly for people with persistent low-back pain. Generally, when people see results like this they want to blame the clinician, but I think that is short-sighted. One of the principal reasons we have not made more progress in the back pain field is that research agencies do not take back pain research seriously. Around the world, back pain research is hugely underfunded relative to the burden of the disease. It’s time for that to change.”

At our chiropractic clinic in Market Harborough and Melton Mowbray we totally agree with these findings and the majority of our patients have been long term sufferers. This makes treatment more complicated and prolonged but with focused treatment and rehabilitation programmes we see great improvement.