Back pain seems to trouble a significant percentage of adults, inspiring some to seek medical treatment and options for pain relief. But a new study in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine suggests that most non-surgical interventions have little or no effect on acute or chronic low back pain. Researchers considered 10 treatments compared with placebo and found that in the 301 trials studied, 90% of treatments were not efficacious and are unlikely to be suitable treatment options with moderate certainty. Among the treatments with some positive results were non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, exercise, spinal manipulative therapy, taping, antidepressants, and transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 agonists. Those that didn’t help, according to evidence among the trials, included exercise, glucocorticoid injections, and paracetamol (acetaminophen) for acute low back pain as well as antibiotics and anesthetics for chronic low back pain. Authors suggest that more targeted study is needed to evaluate helpful treatment protocols.
No quick judgments: Because of its prevalence (39% of adults), back pain can be too quickly judged by clinicians as musculoskeletal. Find out more about a concerning diagnosis in this JUCM Case Report: Escalating Back Pain Leading to a Diagnosis of ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) in Urgent Care: A Case Report