Augusta 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 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 available through the years, many listing 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? Lombardy Chiropractic Clinic found these newly published reports interesting and thought our Augusta 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 Augusta chiropractor keeps abreast of the current guidelines to best help you, our Augusta 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) Lombardy Chiropractic Clinic utilizes 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 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 build confidence that there is hope to our Augusta 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. Lombardy Chiropractic Clinic is one of those chiropractors. Beyond chiropractic, broad guidelines for back pain care are available. 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 announced 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 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 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 saying 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 shared 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! Individually, chiropractors reported themselves as experienced and well-educated spine and musculoskeletal care experts who provided evidence-based care founded on the current research, clinical expertise, and patient values. They provided 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 confident that they can help their back pain patients with those patient’s best interests in mind.
CONTACT Lombardy Chiropractic Clinic
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 relieve a patient dealing with back pain and foot drop.
Make your Augusta chiropractic appointment today. Facing a serious episode 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!
