Vancouver Chiropractics Role in Back Pain Guidelines
Guidelines and recommendations for so many things from how to correctly change a light bulb to when 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 available through the years, many citing 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? Vancouver Disc Centers found these newly published reports attention-getting and thought our Vancouver chiropractic patients would, also. We can all use them to create and follow a guideline-based treatment plan.
BACK PAIN TREATMENT GUIDELINES
Your Vancouver chiropractor is aware of the current guidelines to best help you, our Vancouver back pain patient. Back in 2009, the American College of Physicians listed spinal manipulation in its guidelines’ recommendations of suitable spinal pain care options. (1) Vancouver Disc Centers 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 doesn’t 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 Vancouver 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. Vancouver Disc Centers 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 documented 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 said that they were going through chiropractic and/or PT/OT with an increase to a third after the 2016 clinical guidelines were released. (3) This does show that guidelines help with treatment direction but are not always followed. In Denmark where guidelines for low back pain care are documented 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 experienced pain for more than 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 assembled 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! Independently, chiropractors described themselves as competent and well-educated spine and musculoskeletal care experts who delivered evidence-based care founded on the latest research, clinical expertise, and patient values. They delivered patient-centered care that spreads 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 Vancouver Disc Centers
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.
Schedule your Vancouver 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’s comforting to know that there are available to best manage each task!
