Minster Chiropractics Role in Back Pain Guidelines
Guidelines and recommendations for everything from how to correctly change 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 pain for the first time. Guidelines for the care of back pain have been published through the years, many recommending 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? Minster Chiropractic Center found these newly published reports interesting and thought our Minster chiropractic patients would, also. We can all use them to design and follow a guideline-based treatment plan.
BACK PAIN TREATMENT GUIDELINES
Your Minster chiropractor is aware of the current guidelines to best assist you, our Minster back pain patient. Back in 2009, the American College of Physicians added spinal manipulation to its guidelines’ recommendations of appropriate spinal pain care options. (1) Minster Chiropractic Center utilizes the well-documented Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management which has a published algorithm of decision-making for patients who have pain below the knee and patients who have pain that doesn’t go 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 in the years since. (2) Such guidelines with research backing and proper clinical application soothe our Minster 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. Minster Chiropractic Center 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 announced in 2016. Between 2002 and 2018, a little less than a third of those adults with low back pain reported going through chiropractic and/or PT/OT with an increase to a third after the 2016 clinical guidelines were published. (3) This does demonstrate that guidelines help with treatment direction but are not always followed. In Denmark where guidelines for low back pain care are outlined for primary care before being referred found that 33% of patients had not gone through an adequate course of treatment in primary care before being referred. The patients were on average 53 years old with almost 50% of them reporting that they experienced pain for over a year, and 75% saying that they had 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. Very interesting! Individually, 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 delivered patient-centered care that spreads to cooperating with other healthcare providers in the best interests of the patient. (5) Using guidelines, chiropractors are sure that they can assist their back pain patients with those patient’s best interests in mind.
CONTACT Minster Chiropractic Center
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 Minster chiropractic appointment now. Facing a serious episode of back pain is certainly not equivalent to changing a light bulb for the first time, but it is comforting to know that there are available to navigate the way through the task!
