Montreal 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 pervade our world. Guidelines are appreciated by people facing a new task or a new health condition for the first time. Guidelines for the care of back pain have been published for years, many citing 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? Dr. Hoang's Chiropractic Clinic found these recent reports attention-getting and thought our Montreal chiropractic patients would, too. We can all use them to design and follow a guideline-based treatment plan.
BACK PAIN TREATMENT GUIDELINES
Your Montreal chiropractor keeps abreast of the current guidelines to best assist you, our Montreal 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) Dr. Hoang's Chiropractic Clinic utilizes the well-documented Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management which has a published algorithm of decision-making for patients suffering pain below the knee and patients with pain that doesn’t 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 through the years. (2) Such guidelines with research backing and proper clinical application help our Montreal 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. Dr. Hoang's Chiropractic Clinic is one of those chiropractors. Beyond chiropractic, general guidelines for back pain care are available. 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 rose after clinical guidelines recommending their care were announced in 2016. Between 2002 and 2018, a little less than a third of said adults with low back pain reported going through chiropractic and/or PT/OT with an increase to a third after the 2016 clinical guidelines were published. (3) This does show that guidelines assist with treatment direction but are not always followed. In Denmark where guidelines for low back pain care are documented for primary care before being referred found that 33% of patients had not undergone an adequate course of treatment in primary care before being referred. The patients were on average 53 years old with nearly 50% of them saying 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 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. Quite interesting! Independently, chiropractors described themselves as competent and well-educated spine and musculoskeletal care experts who offered evidence-based care founded on the current 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 sure that they can help their back pain patients with their best interests in mind.
CONTACT Dr. Hoang's 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 help a patient dealing with back pain and foot drop.
Schedule your Montreal 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 is comforting to know that there are available to best manage each task!
