Long lines for UK back pain treatment

If you are one of the eight million chronic back pain sufferers in the UK, you are going to have to wait longer to get a diagnosis and treatment. A recent study has revealed that we wait longer in the UK for diagnosis and treatment of chronic back pain than in any European nation. The average is six years for diagnosis and three years for adequate treatment.

Out of chronic pain sufferers surveyed, it was found that twenty-five per cent suffer depression and forty per cent cannot work. There are 6.5 million visits to the doctor regarding chronic pain every year. The inefficiencies in chronic pain care mean that many people are going untreated and others are suffering terribly long to get relief.

Factor together the medical costs, pharmaceutical costs, and lost work and wages and it is easy to see that chronic pain has a tremendous impact, not only on sufferers, but society as a whole.