Fort Wayne 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 fill our daily lives. Guidelines are appreciated by people confronting a new challenge or a new pain for the first time. Guidelines for the care of back pain have been available for years, many citing non-surgical care including spinal manipulation as first line treatment. Just how well are those guidelines followed by involved healthcare practitioners, by back pain sufferers? Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc found these recent reports interesting and thought our Fort Wayne chiropractic patients would, also. We can all use them to design and go along with a guideline-based treatment plan.
BACK PAIN TREATMENT GUIDELINES
Your Fort Wayne chiropractor keeps abreast of the current guidelines to best assist you, our Fort Wayne 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) Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc uses 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 with 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 in the years since. (2) Such guidelines with research backing and proper clinical application help our Fort Wayne 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. Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc is one of those chiropractors. Beyond chiropractic, broad 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 documented that chiropractic care or OT/PT care for low back pain rose after clinical guidelines recommending their care were announced in 2016. Between 2002 and 2018, a bit less than a third of said adults with low back pain reported getting chiropractic and/or PT/OT with an increase to a third after the 2016 clinical guidelines were released. (3) This does demonstrate that guidelines help with treatment planning 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’d had pain for over a year, and 75% saying that they had 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 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 reported themselves as capable and well-educated spine and musculoskeletal care experts who offered evidence-based care based on the latest research, clinical expertise, and patient values. They delivered patient-centered care that extends to cooperating with other healthcare providers in the best interests of the patient. (5) Using guidelines, chiropractors are sure that they can help their back pain patients with their best interests in mind.
CONTACT Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Ted Siciliano on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he illustrates his use of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management to help a patient dealing with back pain and foot drop.
Make your Fort Wayne chiropractic appointment today. Facing a serious bout of back pain is certainly not equivalent to changing a light bulb for the first time, but it’s comforting to know that there are published guidelines to best manage each task!
