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Success in Treating Lower Back Pain

Wed, 23 Sep 2009

The annual dollar loss regarding low back pain has been reported to range from $84 to $100 billion dollars per year. The physical therapy profession has been most active in research focused towards safety, efficacy, and cost effectiveness while treating the physical and emotional devastation of low back pain. Utilizing evidence-based clinical guidelines, such as the Clinical Prediction Rule (Flynn et al.) physical therapists are able to relieve Lower Back Pain in patients presenting with 4 of 5 of the following criteria with a 95% success rate!

The criteria for most effectively treating lower back pain include:

• Less than 16 days duration of lower back pain,
• palpable hypomobility in lumbar segments
• Greater than 35 degrees of internal rotation of one hip
• and a score of less than 19 on the Fear Avoidance Behavior Questionnaire (FABQ).
  

A study of the Sacro-iliac region demonstrates that the history and physical exam could predict success by 50% or more if the patient presented to a Physical Therapist within 96 hours of onset. (Flynn et al.)

Yet another study was performed that enabled the identification of workers that had potential of chronic low back pain. (Fransen et al.) This was based on findings from self-reported demographic information and successful outcome measures such as the Oswestry. It was also measured utilizing odds ratio (those patients with target event divided by those without target event, an OR >1 means the target event is likely to occur).

What is the bottom line? Get referred to a physical therapist as soon as possible following the onset of lower back symptoms.  The result will be more effective treatment with more positive outcomes. Your back will thank you!