By Sheila Dwyer, Body1 Staff
Back pain is a chronic condition that rarely can be cured or treated effectively. Sufferers seek pain management, one of the most requested but least successful treatment options in medicine. Doctors cannot pinpoint back pain’s cause, so they often provide little help. Chronic back pain sufferers widely use two treatments that provide only temporary physical or psychological relief.
Chronic sufferers endure such excruciating back pain that they are usually willing to try various methods to solve their problem. Most patients will first see a doctor; after sensing an M.D.’s frustration regarding the treatment of back pain, many of these patients will consult with a chiropractor or use a neurostimulator to combat their pain.
Dealing with back pain results in frustration. No surgery, medication, or exercise provides a guaranteed solution. Chiropractors are the sole group of professionals to offer certainty in the alleviation of severe back pain. However, a 1998 New England Journal of Medicine study found that chiropractic patients do not really experience a more significant reduction in pain than those who follow a doctor’s prescription. The patients who continue to see a chiropractor feel satisfaction more from the relief of the psychological effects of their pain than from their physical pain. They benefit from a professional taking their problems seriously and making adjustments to their spine. Spine adjustments offer immediate, though not permanent, reprieve from the pain, and the promise of follow-up visits provides the comfort of progress.
Physicians offer surgery to severe back pain sufferers, though its success is not guaranteed. Chronic back pain patients spend $280 million yearly on surgery, and 15 percent of them emerge from surgery with unresolved back pain. These patients generally have neuropathic pain, which is pain resulting from nerve damage that cannot be resolved by medication or chiropractic.
When surgery fails, neurostimulation may reduce pain. A doctor implants a small system under the skin that sends mild electrical impulses to the spinal cord. These impulses block the signal of pain from reaching the brain by sending a tingling sensation to the pain’s point of origin. Companies such as Medtronic, which was the first to provide neurostimulation systems in the 1970s, have offered temporary pain relief to patients with no other options.
Doctors contend that neurostimulation cannot eliminate the source of pain for everyone. Fifty-two to 66 percent of patients treated with neurostimulation experience a reduction of half to three-quarters of their pain. The other people continue to feel the same discomfort they had before surgery.
Because chronic back pain is a frustrating and uncomfortable condition, patients are usually open to alternative treatments. If a person first has surgery followed by an unsuccessful neurostimulation system, chiropractic could be the solution. No guaranteed method exists for the relief of back pain, so often a positive psychological effect is as successful as anything else.
References:
www.onhealth.com
www.medtronic.com
