The other day the LA Times had a feature piece by Amber Dance on low back pain. Quite a few physical therapists I know got excited about the article, as it showed the profession in a positive fashion. Go click here and read the article. How many times did you see any mention of physical therapists? Twice? In passing?
Go ahead, click on the
supplement feature. That's right! You get to learn all about chiropractic care for low back pain.
The article interviewed an 2 orthopaedic surgeons, a chiropractor, a pain guy, and an internist. No physical therapists.
This article gets my goat in a couple of ways. First, the tag of the article really get's you wondering about what steps other than surgery one should take, but most of page 2 was spent describing different surgical options. The author just couldn't resist! Further, Dance pushed the most helpful and best scientific content of the article way down on the 2nd page, when
Richard Deyo was quoted,
"When you do magnetic resonance imaging or computerized tomography scans of the spine, you sometimes see horrible things in normal people," Deyo says. One-fourth of people under 60 have a herniated disc, he says, and half have a bulging or degenerated disc. "And yet these are people who have no back pain."
The other goat grabbing portion of this option had to do with the lack of focus on physical therapists. Physical therapists are a key cog in the arena of low back pain care, yet were underrepresented in the article. There are litterally thousands upon thousands of orthopaedic physical therapists, and far and away, the most common diagnosis we see is for low back pain. It drives the profession in many ways. We have a lot of work to do to be recognized by the general public for the work we do with back pain.
Even thought the intent of this article was strong and the message mostly consistent, it's still not screaming the right message. What's the right message?
Back pain gets better, usually on its own. Keep moving. We usually don't know the cause of it, so imaging isn't so critical for most people. Keep surgery as a last resort.
Let's make friends with Amber Dance. She's on the right track. But, we have a lot of work to do.
ERIC
The other day the LA Times had a feature piece by Amber Dance on low back pain. Quite a few physical therapists I know got excited about the article, as it showed the profession in a positive fashion. Go click here and read the article. How many times did you see any mention of physical therapists? Twice? In passing?
The other goat grabbing portion of this option had to do with the lack of focus on physical therapists. Physical therapists are a key cog in the arena of low back pain care, yet were underrepresented in the article. There are litterally thousands upon thousands of orthopaedic physical therapists, and far and away, the most common diagnosis we see is for low back pain. It drives the profession in many ways. We have a lot of work to do to be recognized by the general public for the work we do with back pain.