Imaging Injections Do Not Help Back Pain Sufferers

A study reported in the ‘Journal of American Board of Family Practice’ confirmed that the complaints due to chronic back pain have not improved at all in the past years, although the costs of the treatments have greatly increased.

The researchers affirm that treating patients with added imaging, injections and operations will not help patients with chronic backaches, and that back pain must be treated differently. Drastic measures are to be avoided for they cannot effectively cure chronic backaches.

They also affirm that the rate of chronic and acute low back pain has not improved in the past twelve years, although patients are recurring more frequently to back operations. These values leave serious doubts as to the effectiveness of these kinds of treatments; indeed operations can lead to serious complications and can even cause death.

Chronic backache cannot be cured, only treated with regular exercise programmes, which have to be supported by health care. During these therapies patients are to be monitored and educated, in order to render these treatments effective.

Manual physical therapy is considered as a constructive solution to chronic low back pain. This type of therapy applies graded exercising, manual physical therapy and the biopsychosocial model and educates the patients as to their chronic condition.