Manahawkin Chiropractics Role in Back Pain Guidelines
Guidelines and recommendations for everything from how to properly change a light bulb to when to do back surgery pervade our world. Guidelines are valued by people facing a new challenge or a new pain for the first time. Guidelines for the care of back pain have been circulated for years, many listing non-surgical care including spinal manipulation as first line treatment. Just how well are those guidelines followed by relevant healthcare practitioners, by back pain sufferers? Manahawkin Chiropractic Center found these recent reports interesting and thought our Manahawkin chiropractic patients would, also. We can all use them to create and follow a guideline-based treatment plan.
BACK PAIN TREATMENT GUIDELINES
Your Manahawkin chiropractor keeps abreast of the current guidelines to best help you, our Manahawkin 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) Manahawkin Chiropractic Center 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 who have 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 through the years. (2) Such guidelines with research backing and proper clinical application help our Manahawkin 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. Manahawkin Chiropractic Center is one of those chiropractors. Beyond chiropractic, general 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 increased 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 said that they were undergoing chiropractic and/or PT/OT with a rise to a third after the 2016 clinical guidelines were published. (3) This does show that guidelines assist with treatment planning but are not always followed. In Denmark where guidelines for low back pain care are defined for primary care before being referred found that 33% of patients had not gone through an adequate course of treatment in primary care before referral. The patients were on average 53 years old with almost 50% of them reporting that they 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 gathered 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 described themselves as capable and well-educated spine and musculoskeletal care experts who offered 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 confident that they can assist their back pain patients with their best interests in mind.
CONTACT Manahawkin Chiropractic Center
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 help a patient dealing with back pain and foot drop.
Schedule your Manahawkin chiropractic appointment now. Facing a serious episode of back pain is certainly not equivalent to changing a light bulb for the first time, but it is comforting to know that there are published guidelines to properly manage each task!
