La Grande Chiropractics Role in Back Pain Guidelines
Guidelines and recommendations for everything from how to properly change a light bulb to appropriately decide on whether to do back surgery fill our daily lives. Guidelines are appreciated by people confronting a new challenge or a new health condition for the first time. Guidelines for the care of back pain have been published for years, many recommending non-surgical care including spinal manipulation as first line treatment. Just how well are those guidelines followed by involved healthcare practitioners, by back pain patients? Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC found these recent reports interesting and thought our La Grande chiropractic patients would, also. We can all use them to design and follow a guideline-based treatment plan.
BACK PAIN TREATMENT GUIDELINES
Your La Grande chiropractor keeps abreast of the current guidelines to best assist you, our La Grande back pain patient. Back in 2009, the American College of Physicians listed spinal manipulation in its guidelines’ recommendations of appropriate spinal pain care choices. (1) Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC uses the well-documented Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management which has a published algorithm of decision-making for patients who have pain below the knee and patients who experience pain that does not go below the knee with a goal of 50% improvement in 30 days or so of care. These guidelines were released in 1996 and have been tested in clinic-based data collections in the years since. (2) Such guidelines with research backing and proper clinical application help our La Grande chiropractic patients!
ARE GUIDELINES BEING FOLLOWED?
We hope so! Nearly 64% of chiropractors say they use (Cox®) flexion distraction with their spine pain patients and have the algorithm/guideline accessible to them. Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC is one of those chiropractors. Beyond chiropractic, general guidelines for back pain care are also accessible. Are they followed? A recent review of chiropractic and OT/PT use among 146,087 adults with low back pain in the past 3 months found that chiropractic care or OT/PT care for low back pain increased after clinical guidelines recommending their care were introduced in 2016. Between 2002 and 2018, a little less than a third of said adults with low back pain said that they were going through chiropractic and/or PT/OT with an increase to a third after the 2016 clinical guidelines were published. (3) This does show that guidelines assist with treatment direction but are not always followed. In Denmark where guidelines for low back pain care are charted for primary care before referral found that 33% of patients had not undergone an adequate course of treatment in primary care before referral. The patients were on average 53 years old with nearly 50% of them reporting that they had pain for over a year, and 75% saying that they experienced pain below the knee. (4) Struggles in the healthcare system to abide by guidelines are seemingly global.
CHIROPRACTIC’S ROLE
A group of chiropractic leaders shared their ideas on the role of the chiropractor in his/her own practice, with his/her own patients, within the healthcare community, and within society for healthcare. Quite interesting! Independently, chiropractors reported themselves as competent and well-educated spine and musculoskeletal care experts who delivered evidence-based care based on the current research, clinical expertise, and patient values. They provided patient-centered care that extends to cooperating with other healthcare providers in the best interests of the patient. (5) Using guidelines, chiropractors are sure that they can assist their back pain patients with their best interests in mind.
CONTACT Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Ted Siciliano on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he illustrates his use of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management to help a patient dealing with back pain and foot drop.
Schedule your La Grande chiropractic appointment now. Facing a serious bout of back pain is certainly not comparable to changing a light bulb for the first time, but it’s comforting to know that there are available to navigate the way through the task!
