St Peters Chiropractics Role in Back Pain Guidelines
Guidelines and recommendations for so many things from how to properly change a light bulb to appropriately decide on whether to do back surgery fill our daily lives. Guidelines are appreciated by people confronting a new challenge or a new health condition for the first time. Guidelines for the care of back pain have been available 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 practitioners, by back pain sufferers? Old Mill Chiropractic found these recent reports attention-getting and thought our St Peters chiropractic patients would, also. We can all use them to design and follow a guideline-based treatment plan.
BACK PAIN TREATMENT GUIDELINES
Your St Peters chiropractor is aware of the current guidelines to best assist you, our St Peters back pain patient. Back in 2009, the American College of Physicians added spinal manipulation to its guidelines’ recommendations of suitable spinal pain care choices. (1) Old Mill Chiropractic uses the well-documented Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management which has a published algorithm of decision-making for patients suffering pain below the knee and patients who have pain that doesn’t extend below the knee with a goal of 50% improvement in a month 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 soothe our St Peters 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 accessible to them. Old Mill Chiropractic is one of those chiropractors. Beyond chiropractic, general guidelines for back pain care are also accessible. Are they followed? A recent review of chiropractic and OT/PT use among 146,087 adults with low back pain in the past 3 months found that chiropractic care or OT/PT care for low back pain increased after clinical guidelines recommending their care were announced in 2016. Between 2002 and 2018, a bit less than a third of those adults with low back pain reported getting chiropractic and/or PT/OT with an increase to a third after the 2016 clinical guidelines were published. (3) This does show that guidelines assist with treatment planning but are not always followed. In Denmark where guidelines for low back pain care are charted for primary care before referral found that 33% of patients had not undergone an adequate course of treatment in primary care before referral. The patients were on average 53 years old with almost 50% of them reporting that they had pain for over a year, and 75% saying that they experienced pain below the knee. (4) Struggles in the healthcare system to abide by guidelines are seemingly global.
CHIROPRACTIC’S ROLE
A group of chiropractic leaders compiled their thoughts 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. Quite interesting! Individually, chiropractors described themselves as competent and well-educated spine and musculoskeletal care experts who offered evidence-based care founded on the latest research, clinical expertise, and patient values. They delivered 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 assist their back pain patients with their best interests in mind.
CONTACT Old Mill Chiropractic
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Ted Siciliano on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he illustrates how he used The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management to help a patient dealing with back pain and foot drop.
Schedule your St Peters chiropractic appointment now. 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 available to navigate the way through the task!
