Low Back Pain

Low Back Pain in Primary Care: A Description of 1250 Patients

By Frank M. Painter|October 17, 2015|Chiropractic Care, Chronic Pain, Low Back Pain|

Low Back Pain in Primary Care: A Description of 1250 Patients with Low Back Pain in Danish General and Chiropractic Practice

SOURCE: Int J Family Med. 2014 (Nov 4); 2014: 106102 ~ FULL TEXT

Lise Hestbaek, Anders Munck, Lisbeth Hartvigsen,
Dorte Ejg Jarbøl, Jens Søndergaard, and Alice Kongsted

Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics,
University of Southern Denmark,
5230 Odense, Denmark
l.hestbaek@nikkb.dk

Study Design. Baseline description of a multicenter cohort study.

Objective. To describe patients with low back pain (LBP) in both chiropractic and general practice in Denmark.

Background. To optimize standards of care in the primary healthcare sector, detailed knowledge of the patient populations in different settings is needed. In Denmark, most LBP-patients access primary healthcare through chiropractic or general practice.

Methods. Chiropractors and general practitioners recruited adult patients seeking care for LBP. Extensive baseline questionnaires were obtained and descriptive analyses presented separately for general and chiropractic practice patients, Mann-Whitney rank sum test and Pearson’s chi-square test, were used to test for differences between the two populations.

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Report of the NIH Task Force on Research Standards for Chronic Low Back Pain

By Frank M. Painter|September 27, 2015|Chiropractic Research, Low Back Pain|

Report of the NIH Task Force on Research Standards for Chronic Low Back Pain

The Chiro.Org Blog

SOURCE: Int J Ther Massage Bodywork. 2015 (Sep 1); 8 (3): 16–33 ~ FULL TEXT

Richard A. Deyo, MD, MPH, Samuel F. Dworkin, DDS, PhD,
Dagmar Amtmann, PhD, Gunnar Andersson, MD, PhD,
David Borenstein, MD, Eugene Carragee, MD,
John Carrino, MD, MPH, Roger Chou, MD, Karon Cook, PhD,
Anthony DeLitto, PT, PhD, Christine Goertz, DC, PhD,
Partap Khalsa, DC, PhD, John Loeser, MD, Sean Mackey, MD, PhD,
James Panagis, MD, James Rainville, MD, Tor Tosteson, ScD,
Dennis Turk, PhD, Michael Von Korff, ScD, and Debra K. Weiner, MD

Oregon Health and Sciences University,
Portland, OR.

Despite rapidly increasing intervention, functional disability due to chronic low back pain (cLBP) has increased in recent decades. We often cannot identify mechanisms to explain the major negative impact cLBP has on patients’ lives. Such cLBP is often termed non-specific, and may be due to multiple biologic and behavioral etiologies. Researchers use varied inclusion criteria, definitions, baseline assessments, and outcome measures, which impede comparisons and consensus. The NIH Pain Consortium therefore charged a Research Task Force (RTF) to draft standards for research on cLBP. The resulting multidisciplinary panel recommended using 2 questions to define cLBP; classifying cLBP by its impact (defined by pain intensity, pain interference, and physical function); use of a minimal data set to describe research participants (drawing heavily on the PROMIS methodology); reporting “responder analyses” in addition to mean outcome scores; and suggestions for future research and dissemination. The Pain Consortium has approved the recommendations, which investigators should incorporate into NIH grant proposals. The RTF believes these recommendations will advance the field, help to resolve controversies, and facilitate future research addressing the genomic, neurologic, and other mechanistic substrates of chronic low back pain. We expect the RTF recommendations will become a dynamic document, and undergo continual improvement.

KEYWORDS: &nbsp NIH Task Force; chronic low back pain; low back pain; minimum dataset; research standards

From the FULL TEXT Article:

Introduction

The Institute of Medicine recently estimated that chronic pain affects about 100 million adults in the United States, with an estimated annual cost of $635 billion, including direct medical expenditures and loss of work productivity. [3] Activity-limiting low back pain (LBP), in particular, has a world-wide lifetime prevalence of about 39% and a similar annual prevalence of 38%. [61] The majority of people having LBP experience recurrent episodes. [62] The use of all interventions for treating chronic LBP (cLBP) increased from 1995–2010, including surgery, pharmacological, and non-pharmacological approaches. Despite increased utilization, however, the prevalence of symptoms and expenditures has increased. [37, 70, 91]

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Do Participants With Low Back Pain Who Respond to Spinal Manipulative Therapy Differ Biomechanically?

By Frank M. Painter|September 1, 2015|Chiropractic Care, Low Back Pain, Spinal Manipulation|

Do Participants With Low Back Pain Who Respond to Spinal Manipulative Therapy Differ Biomechanically From Nonresponders, Untreated Controls or Asymptomatic Controls?

The Chiro.Org Blog

SOURCE: Spine 2015 (Sep 1); 40 (17): 1329–1337 ~ FULL TEXT

Wong, Arnold Y. L. PT, MPhil, PhD; Parent, Eric C. PT, PhD;
Dhillon, Sukhvinder S. MB, ChB, CCST; Prasad, Narasimha PhD;
Kawchuk, Gregory N. DC, PhD

Department of Rehabilitation Sciences,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
Kowloon, Hong Kong

Department of Physical Therapy,
University of Alberta,
Alberta, Canada

FROM: University of Alberta ~ 8-31-2015

Researchers at the University of Alberta have found that spinal manipulation—applying force to move joints to treat pain, a technique most often used by chiropractors and physical therapists — does indeed have immediate benefits for some patients with low-back pain but does not work for others with low-back pain. And though on the surface this latest conflict might appear to muddy the waters further, the results point to the complexity of low-back pain and the need to treat patients differently, says lead author Greg Kawchuk.“This study shows that, just like some people respond differently to a specific medication, there are different groups of people who respond differently to spinal manipulation.”

In a non-randomized control study, individuals with low-back pain received spinal manipulation during two treatment sessions that spanned a week. Participants reported their pain levels and disability levels after spinal manipulation, and researchers used ultrasound, MRI and other diagnostics to measure changes in each participant’s back, including muscle activity, properties within the intervertebral discs, and spinal stiffness.

A control group of participants with low-back pain underwent similar clinical examinations but did not receive spinal manipulation. A third group — those who did not have low-back pain symptoms — were also evaluated.

The people who responded to spinal manipulation reported less pain right away and showed improvement in back muscle thickness, disc diffusion and spinal stiffness. Those changes were great enough to exceed or equal the measures in the control groups and stayed that way for the week of treatment, the research team found.
A patient receives spinal manipulation treatment.

Kawchuk, who practised as a chiropractor before going on to obtain his PhD in biomechanics and bioengineering, said the results do not advocate one way or another for spinal manipulation but help explain why there has been so much conflicting data about its merits.

“Clearly there are some people with a specific type of back pain who are responding to this treatment and there are some people with another type of back pain who do not. But if you don’t know that and you mix those two groups together, you get an artificial average that doesn’t mean anything,” Kawchuk explained.

The research team is still fine-tuning how to distinguish who is a responder or non-responder before spinal manipulation is given; however, this study shows it can be used to identify an effective treatment course.

“Spinal manipulation acts so rapidly in responders that it could be used as a screening tool to help get the right treatment to the right patient at the right time.”

The study did not investigate the long-term effects of spinal manipulation, but this is next on the list for the researchers.

STUDY DESIGN: Nonrandomized controlled study.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether patients with low back pain (LBP) who respond to spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) differ biomechanically from nonresponders, untreated controls or asymptomatic controls.

SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: Some but not all patients with LBP report improvement in function after SMT. When compared with nonresponders, studies suggest that SMT responders demonstrate significant changes in spinal stiffness, muscle contraction, and disc diffusion. Unfortunately, the significance of these observations remains uncertain given methodological differences between studies including a lack of controls.

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The Chiropractic Hospital-Based Interventions Research Outcomes Study

By Frank M. Painter|July 10, 2015|Evidence-based Medicine, Low Back Pain|

The Chiropractic Hospital-Based Interventions Research Outcomes Study: Consistency of Outcomes Between Doctors of Chiropractic Treating Patients With Acute Lower Back Pain

The Chiro.Org Blog

SOURCE: J Manipulative Physiol Ther. 2015 (Jun 24) ~ FULL TEXT

Jeffrey A. Quon, DC, MHSc, PhD, FCCS(C), Paul B. Bishop, DC, MD, PhD,
Brian Arthur, DC, MSc

Clinical Associate Professor,
Faculty of Medicine,
School of Population and Public Health,
University of British Columbia

Introduction

Within mainstream health care, the customary management of low back pain (LBP) by primary care medical physicians is often not evidence based. Interestingly, clinical practice guidelines (CPG) for the treatment of acute mechanical LBP, for example, have been developed independently by multidisciplinary expert panels in 12 countries. [1-12]

The recommendations from those guidelines have been further accompanied by rigorous systematic reviews of the evidence [13-15] rather than expert consensus alone, [1] and, to date, they have generally endorsed the use of the following conservative modalities:

(1) reassurance about the favorable natural history of acute LBP,

(2) early activation,

(3) time-limited nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medication
(barring contraindications), and

(4) spinal manipulative therapy (SMT).

Despite widespread dissemination of CPG for LBP, compliance with this knowledge in general and with the SMT component in particular has been limited among mainstream health care providers. This is particularly true among family medical physicians, [16-18] whose personal beliefs about effective LBP care are often discordant with what is known from external research evidence. [19, 20] Yet, ironically, family medical physicians account for most office visits for LBP in many North American jurisdictions. [21]

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JAMA Recommends Chiropractic as First Means of Back Pain Treatment

By Frank M. Painter|April 15, 2015|Chiropractic Care, Low Back Pain|

JAMA Recommends Chiropractic as First Means of Back Pain Treatment

The Chiro.Org Blog

SOURCE: FOX2now

John Pertzborn

JAMA`s recommendation comes on the heels of a recent study out of the medical journal Spine where sufferers of lower back pain all received standard medical care (SMC) and half of the participants additionally received chiropractic care.

The researchers found that in SMC plus chiropractic care patients, 73% reported that their pain was completely gone or much better after treatment compared to just 17% of the standard medical care group.

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A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing a Multimodal Intervention and Standard Obstetrics Care for Low Back and Pelvic Pain in Pregnancy

By Frank M. Painter|February 1, 2015|Low Back Pain, Pregnancy|

A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing a Multimodal Intervention and Standard Obstetrics Care for Low Back and Pelvic Pain in Pregnancy

The Chiro.Org Blog

SOURCE: Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2013 (Apr); 208 (4): 295.e1-7 ~ FULL TEXT

James W. George, DC, Clayton D. Skaggs, DC,
Paul A. Thompson, PhD, D. Michael Nelson, MD, PhD,
Jeffrey A. Gavard, PhD, Gilad A. Gross, MD

Chiropractic Science Division,
College of Chiropractic,
Logan University,
Chesterfield, MO, USA.

OBJECTIVE: Women commonly experience low back pain during pregnancy. We examined whether a multimodal approach of musculoskeletal and obstetric management (MOM) was superior to standard obstetric care to reduce pain, impairment, and disability in the antepartum period.

STUDY DESIGN: A prospective, randomized trial of 169 women was conducted. Baseline evaluation occurred at 24-28 weeks’ gestation, with follow-up at 33 weeks’ gestation. Primary outcomes were the Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) for pain and the Quebec Disability Questionnaire (QDQ). Both groups received routine obstetric care. Chiropractic specialists provided manual therapy, stabilization exercises, and patient education to MOM participants.

RESULTS: The MOM group demonstrated significant mean reductions in Numerical Rating Scale scores (5.8 ± 2.2 vs 2.9 ± 2.5; P < .001) and Quebec Disability Questionnaire scores (4.9 ± 2.2 vs 3.9 ± 2.4; P < .001) from baseline to follow-up evaluation. The group that received standard obstetric care demonstrated no significant improvements.

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