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plus 1 more,“Health Beat: Doctors tout benefits of back pain ... - News 8 Austin”

2010-04-10T21:23:00.001-07:00

plus 1 more,“Health Beat: Doctors tout benefits of back pain ... - News 8 Austin”

Health Beat: Doctors tout benefits of back pain ... - News 8 Austin

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 04:59 PM PDT

Experts say as many as 80 percent of the U.S. population will experience back pain some time in their lives. It is estimated that Americans spend at least $50 billion each year on back pain.

Research indicates that most cases of back pain are not caused by serious conditions such as arthritis, fracture, cancer or infections, but rather contributed to by sprained ligaments, strained muscles, ruptured disks and irritated joints.

Arthritis, poor posture, psychological stress and obesity can worsen back pain.

Pain can also result from disease of internal organs such as kidney stones, blood clots, bone loss and kidney infections. About 31 million Americans experience low back pain at any given time, and at least half of all working Americans admit to having back pain symptoms every year.

Having back pain is one of the most common reasons employees miss work and is the second most common reason for doctor visits.

Susan Hall, Public Relations
Baylor Medial Centers
Plano, TX
susanH@baylorhealth.edu

Physicians suggest that the best position for back pain relief is to lie on your back on the floor with pillows under your knees. This position takes the pressure and weight off of your back. Heating pads can also help to relax the painful muscle spasms on the back and should be used for 20 to 30 minutes at a time.

Other pain solutions may be to use an ice pack, undergo massage, lose weight, exercise, improve posture or use nonprescription medicines that reduce pain.

Chiropractic care may be another option. It is used to treat neuromusculoskeletal complaints such as back pain, neck pain, joint pain and headaches.

Chiropractors practice a drug-free, hands-on approach. The most common therapy utilized is "spinal manipulation."

The purpose is to restore joint mobility by manually applying force into joints, which are injured.

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is a medical therapy for patients who suffer chronic pain. SCS uses an implanted device, a stimulator, which delivers mild electrical pulses to nerve fibers. The mild electrical pulses sent to the spinal cord ultimately replace the feeling of pain.

The SCS device operates much like a pacemaker and is a direct approach to treating pain. The SCS is effective in reducing chronic pain, is available for trials before a permanent device is implanted and can be turned off or removed at will.

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St Petersburg Chiropractor - Back Pain Relief Clinics - PRLog (free press release)

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 04:02 PM PDT

PR Log (Press Release) – Apr 05, 2010 – St Petersburg Chiropractor - Back Pain Relief Clinics

Chiropractic is a complete health care system which deals with the professional diagnosis and treatment of a patient with health related problems of the musculoskeletal and neuromuscular systems. Chiropractors are doctors who are licensed and should have 4 years undergraduate education and the doctorate completion of a chiropractic college.

The chiropractic profession believes in a conservative approach to complete and total health care, a good doctor of chiropractic may offer the patient safer and more effective non-surgical and/or non-drug involved approaches to their ailments and problems. Sometimes, the best source of choosing a good chiropractor is with the referral from a relative or friend who has had a successful experience. I would seek out people in the profession and ask them who they would think is a good doctor in the area.

A reputable doctor of chiropractic will do a complete analysis of your body which may involve an extensive patient history, x-rays and other diagnostic evaluation tools to help correctly diagnose your problem. X-Rays are a tool which the doctor uses to help further diagnose any spinal injuries which may have occured. Chiropractors are very helpful with injuries related to auto accidents, sports injuries, slip and fall and other related problems.

Approximately two thirds of permanent spinal injuries are auto related. This is why it is very important to have your spine evaluated after any type of auto accident. Furthermore, studies have shown that low impact auto accidents can likely cause serious injury to the occupants. The car does not always have to be "totaled" or "seriously damaged" to cause bodily injury.

If you would like to visit a recommended St Petersburg Chiropractor, simply CLICK HERE or visit http://www.backpainreliefclinics.com to make an appointment.

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plus 1 more,“Study: Riskier surgeries for back pain raise costs - comcast.net”

2010-04-09T21:15:00.001-07:00

plus 1 more,“Study: Riskier surgeries for back pain raise costs - comcast.net”

Study: Riskier surgeries for back pain raise costs - comcast.net

Posted: 09 Apr 2010 02:09 PM PDT

CHICAGO — A study of Medicare patients shows that costlier, more complex spinal fusion surgeries are on the rise — and sometimes done unnecessarily — for a common lower back condition caused by aging and arthritis.

What's more alarming is that the findings suggest these more challenging operations are riskier, leading to more complications and even deaths.

"This is exactly what the health care debate has been dancing around," said Dr. Eugene Carragee of Stanford University Medical Center.

"You have one kind of operation that could cost $20,000 and another that could cost $80,000 and there's not good evidence the expensive one is being used appropriately in the majority of cases," Carragee said.

Add to that the expense for patients whose problems after surgery send them back to the hospital or to a nursing home and "that's not a trivial amount of money" for Medicare, said Carragee. He wrote an accompanying editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association where the federally funded study appears Wednesday.

The cost to Medicare, just for the hospital charges for the three types of back surgery reviewed is about $1.65 billion a year, according to the researchers.

All the patients in the study had stenosis in their lower backs, a painful squeezing in the spine that's most common in people over 50. The researchers compared the risks for three different types of surgery for the condition: decompression, simple fusion and complex fusion.

"All operations aren't the same and some seem to be associated with higher complication rates than others," said lead author Dr. Richard Deyo of Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. "It's not necessarily true that the more aggressive surgery is better, at least in terms of safety."

There's little agreement about the best way to treat chronic lower back pain, and much depends on what's causing the pain.

Patients should ask their doctors about alternatives to complicated operations, Deyo said. Could steroid injections and physical therapy be tried? Would a simple decompression procedure be as helpful as a spinal fusion and with less risk?

In a decompression procedure, the simplest method in the Medicare study, a surgeon cuts away part of the bone that's painfully pressing on nerves. It can cost about $30,000 in hospital and surgeon fees.

For a fusion, a surgeon binds two or more vertebrae together using a bone graft, with or without plates and screws. The researchers defined a complex fusion as one involving three or more vertebrae or more than one side of the spine. Fusions cost $60,000 to $90,000.

The researchers analyzed data on more than 32,000 Medicare patients who had one of the three types of surgeries in 2007.

About 5 in 100 patients who had simple or complex fusions suffered major complications such as stroke compared to 2 in 100 with decompressions. The risk of death within 30 days after surgery was different too: 6 in 1,000 for complex fusions compared with 5 in 1,000 for simple fusions and 3 in 1,000 for decompressions.

The study didn't address how successful the various types of surgeries were at relieving pain.

More than half the patients who had complex fusions had a simple stenosis, which usually calls for decompression alone. They did not have the curvature of the spine or a slipped vertebra — additional conditions that might suggest a fusion is needed. There's not much evidence for doing a complex fusion for a person with simple stenosis, Carragee and other experts said.

"It certainly looks like there's more complex surgery being done than we have very good evidence to support," Carragee said.

Rates of complex fusions in Medicare patients rose 15-fold from 2002 to 2007, while decompressions and simple fusions declined, the study found. Although the overall procedure rate fell, hospital charges grew 40 percent.

Aggressive marketing of devices used in complex fusions is likely playing a role in the increase, Deyo said. The marketing includes ads in medical journals and lectures by surgeons on the payroll of device manufacturers.

Allegations of kickbacks to spine surgeons for using products and questionable financial arrangements to doctors as consultants have plagued the multibillion-dollar industry. One company, Medtronic Inc., reached a $40 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department in a whistleblower case that included allegations the company paid doctors to use its spine surgery products. The company denied any wrongdoing.

Dr. Charles Rosen, a spine surgeon at the University of California, Irvine, founded the Association for Medical Ethics to nudge doctors toward scientific evidence over vested interests. Forty-nine spine surgeons have joined, pledging to refuse any type of compensation or earnings from companies for using a product.

Rosen applauded a provision in the new health care law that requires device makers and others to file annual reports to the government on their financial ties to doctors. Patients will be able to look up possible conflicts in a government database.

"Too much fusion surgery is done in this country and often for inappropriate reasons," Rosen said. While complex fusions are needed for some conditions, he said, patients "should not hesitate to get a second opinion."

___

On the Net:

JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.org

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Breaks, posture shifts help ward off low back pain - canada.com

Posted: 07 Apr 2010 07:45 AM PDT

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who do work that requires them to spend lots of time with their backs bent should take frequent walking and standing breaks to avoid lower back pain, the authors of a new study conclude.

Dr. Kelvin C.H. Wong of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University used a device called an accelerometer to track spinal posture in workers at a school for severely handicapped individuals. All the workers had to spend a considerable amount of time working in a stooped posture, for example to move students -- most of whom needed help with activities of daily living -- from place to place.

Eighteen of the workers had suffered from low back pain for a minimum of one to seven days in the previous year, while 15 had no back pain problems for the past 12 months.

Each wore an accelerometer attached to their trunk for three hours in the morning and another three hours in the afternoon. The device was able to record the degree to which people's backs had moved out of the upright position, and how much time they spent in various degrees of back flexion.

Overall, Wong and his team found, the people who had back pain were spending more time with their trunks in the same position compared to people who were pain-free. They also spent less time with their backs flexed less than 10 degrees, and more time in three positions in which their backs were bent more than 10 degrees.

"It thus appears that an increase in risk of back pain may be associated with long periods of sustained stooped posture," the researchers state in the online journal BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders.

Changing one's posture frequently and remaining aware of trunk posture can help fight fatigue and reduce the stress the workers were placing on their backs, Wong and his colleagues say, adding: "Rest activities such as standing up from stooping and walking for a short distance are suggested to promote the cyclic muscular contraction and relaxation that facilitate the nourishment of spinal tissues and provide periodic rest to the muscles."

SOURCE: BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, online April 29, 2009.

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plus 1 more,“Health Beat: Doctors tout benefits of back pain ... - News 8 Austin”

2010-04-08T21:05:00.001-07:00