What To Expect When Dealing With Low Back Pain
Thursday, September 9th, 2010If you suffer from low back pain, you are not alone. At some point in his or her life, ninety percent of Americans will deal with low back pain. Low Back Pain represents the fifth most common reason for visits to the doctor. The direct cost of care in the US per year for back pain is 16 billion dollars! On any given day in the US there are over 6 million people in bed with back pain.
Some news is good. Within six to twelve weeks, 90% of back pain resolves completely, regardless of the treatment undertaken. If a person undergoes physical therapy, chiropractic treatment, interventional pain management, muscle relaxers,pain medication, or back bracing the pain resolution may occur faster. If the core stabilization and lumbar strengthening exercises are continued it can prevent back pain from recurring in the future. Studies have shown that bed rest longer than two days is contraindicated and patients should be out of bed mobilizing and trying to be as active as possible to get their pain resolved. With bedrest, pain does not get better any faster and unfortunately the person becomes deconditioned which can elongate the time in pain.
Back pain becomes chronic 10 percent of the time. Chronic is defined as pain that lasts for longer than three months.
Approximately half of patients with chronic low back pain become disabled and unable to work, unable to carry out normal daily living tasks, and unable to participate in recreational and leisure activities. This can lead to drug abuse, family dysfunction, marital strife, and depression. If an individual is out of work for over 6 months, there is under a one in two chance that individual will ever return to work. If someone is out of work for over 2 years, it becomes very rare for that person to ever return to the workforce.
Of the patients who develop chronic pain, a minority will decide to undergo surgery for pain relief. There are 500,000 low back surgeries performed each year in the United States. As only twenty percent of back surgeries are considered complete successes after 2 years, surgery should be undertaken with extreme caution.