It’s like a stab in the kidneys. In the morning, if you got stuck on the bottom of the bed with a sharp pain in your lower back, there is a good chance that you have low back pain! You are not alone, back pain is a bit of “the evil of the century”. Doctors estimate that 4 in 5 adults have it or will have it one day. It is even the leading cause of disability at work among people under 45.
There are treatments: drugs, manipulation by a health professional. German researchers have shown that one to two sessions of manipulation would be more effective than treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs in people between 18 and 55 years old with acute low back pain lasting less than 15 days and without sciatica. These results were presented at the last congress of the French Society of Orthopedic and Osteopathic Manual Medicine. Dr Jean-Yves Maigne from the Hôtel Dieu in Paris has become the ambassador of this technique. According to him, it is not a question “of opposing manual and medicinal treatments but rather of mixing them wisely”.
Each patient has their own back pain… As British doctors recently recalled. Across the Channel, more personalized care for low back pain has been implemented. Experts have designed a questionnaire that allows the general practitioner to characterize the patient’s back pain more precisely, and above all to better adapt the treatment to the disease according to the prognostic risk. This strategy allows the community to save 34 euros per patient, and above all, the patient regains the use of his back more quickly.
Hill J et al. “Comparison of stratified primary care management for low back pain with current best practice (STarT Back): A randomized controlled trial”. (The Lancet 2011)
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