Richmond Chiropractics Role in Back Pain Guidelines
Guidelines and recommendations for everything from how to properly replace a light bulb to appropriately decide on whether to do back surgery fill our world. 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 circulated through the years, many listing non-surgical care including spinal manipulation as first line treatment. Just how well are those guidelines followed by involved healthcare providers, by back pain patients? Johnson Chiropractic found these newly published reports interesting and thought our Richmond chiropractic patients would, also. We can all use them to create and go along with a guideline-based treatment plan.
BACK PAIN TREATMENT GUIDELINES
Your Richmond chiropractor is aware of the current guidelines to best assist you, our Richmond 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) Johnson Chiropractic 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 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 Richmond 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. Johnson Chiropractic 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 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 bit less than a third of those adults with low back pain said that they were going through chiropractic and/or PT/OT with a rise 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 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 nearly 50% of them reporting that they’d had pain for more than 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 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 competent 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 with the best interest of the patient in mind. (5) Using guidelines, chiropractors are sure that they can assist their back pain patients with their best interests in mind.
CONTACT Johnson Chiropractic
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 Richmond chiropractic appointment now. Facing a serious episode 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 best manage each task!
