Baton Rouge Chiropractics Role in Back Pain Guidelines
Guidelines and recommendations for so many things from how to properly replace a light bulb to appropriately decide on whether to do back surgery pervade our world. Guidelines are valued by people facing a new task or a new health condition for the first time. Guidelines for the care of back pain have been published through the years, many citing non-surgical care including spinal manipulation as first line treatment. Just how well are those guidelines followed by relevant healthcare providers, by back pain patients? Medical Spine and Sports Injury and Rehab Centers found these recent reports interesting and thought our Baton Rouge chiropractic patients would, too. We can all use them to design and go along with a guideline-based treatment plan.
BACK PAIN TREATMENT GUIDELINES
Your Baton Rouge chiropractor keeps abreast of the current guidelines to best help you, our Baton Rouge back pain patient. Back in 2009, the American College of Physicians added spinal manipulation to its guidelines’ recommendations of appropriate spinal pain care choices. (1) Medical Spine and Sports Injury and Rehab Centers uses the well-documented Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management which has a published algorithm of decision-making for patients with pain below the knee and patients who have pain that doesn’t go below the knee with a goal of 50% improvement in 30 days or so of care. These guidelines were released in 1996 and have been tested in clinic-based data collections through the years. (2) Such guidelines with research support and proper clinical application help our Baton Rouge chiropractic patients!
ARE GUIDELINES BEING FOLLOWED?
We hope so! Nearly 64% of chiropractors say they use (Cox®) flexion distraction with their spine pain patients and have the algorithm/guideline available to them. Medical Spine and Sports Injury and Rehab Centers is one of those chiropractors. Beyond chiropractic, broad guidelines for back pain care are also accessible. Are they followed? A newly completed review of chiropractic and OT/PT use among 146,087 adults with low back pain in the past 3 months documented that chiropractic care or OT/PT care for low back pain increased after clinical guidelines recommending their care were introduced in 2016. Between 2002 and 2018, a bit less than a third of those adults with low back pain reported undergoing chiropractic and/or PT/OT with an increase to a third after the 2016 clinical guidelines were published. (3) This does show that guidelines help with treatment direction but are not always followed. In Denmark where guidelines for low back pain care are documented for primary care before referral found that 33% of patients had not gone through an adequate course of treatment in primary care before referral. The patients were on average 53 years old with almost 50% of them saying that they had pain for more than a year, and 75% reporting pain below the knee. (4) Struggles in the healthcare system to follow guidelines are seemingly global.
CHIROPRACTIC’S ROLE
A group of chiropractic leaders compiled their ideas on the role of the chiropractor in his/her own practice, with his/her own patients, within the healthcare community, and within society for healthcare. Very interesting! Independently, chiropractors described themselves as experienced and well-educated spine and musculoskeletal care experts who delivered evidence-based care based on the current research, clinical expertise, and patient values. They provided patient-centered care that spreads to cooperating with other healthcare providers with the best interest of the patient in mind. (5) Using guidelines, chiropractors are confident that they can help their back pain patients with their best interests in mind.
CONTACT Medical Spine and Sports Injury and Rehab Centers
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Ted Siciliano on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes how he used The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management to relieve a patient dealing with back pain and foot drop.
Schedule your Baton Rouge chiropractic appointment today. Facing a serious bout of back pain is certainly not comparable to changing a light bulb for the first time, but it’s comforting to know that there are published guidelines to navigate the way through the task!
