Carrolltown Chiropractics Role in Back Pain Guidelines
Guidelines and recommendations for everything from how to correctly replace a light bulb to appropriately decide on whether to do back surgery fill our daily lives. Guidelines are valued by people confronting a new task or a new pain for the first time. Guidelines for the care of back pain have been issued for 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 patients? Gormish Chiropractic & Rehabilitation found these newly published reports interesting and thought our Carrolltown 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 Carrolltown chiropractor is aware of the current guidelines to best help you, our Carrolltown back pain patient. Back in 2009, the American College of Physicians listed spinal manipulation in its guidelines’ recommendations of appropriate spinal pain care options. (1) Gormish Chiropractic & Rehabilitation 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 with pain that does not 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 help our Carrolltown 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. Gormish Chiropractic & Rehabilitation is one of those chiropractors. Beyond chiropractic, general 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 found that chiropractic care or OT/PT care for low back pain rose after clinical guidelines recommending their care were introduced 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 a rise to a third after the 2016 clinical guidelines were published. (3) This does show that guidelines help 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 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 saying that they had pain for over a year, and 75% reporting 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 gathered 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! Independently, chiropractors reported themselves as competent 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 extends to cooperating with other healthcare providers with the best interest of the patient in mind. (5) Using guidelines, chiropractors are sure that they can help their back pain patients with those patient’s best interests in mind.
CONTACT Gormish Chiropractic & Rehabilitation
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Ted Siciliano on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes his use of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management to help a patient dealing with back pain and foot drop.
Make your Carrolltown chiropractic appointment soon. Facing a serious episode of back pain is certainly not comparable to changing a light bulb for the first time, but it is comforting to know that there are available to best manage each task!
