Fort Wayne Chiropractic Care Instead of an Emergency Room Visit and Pain Meds for Back Pain
Emergency room physicians are working on figuring out what is best to offer back pain patients who visit the ER for help. It is a dilemma for them, especially since nearly 3 million such patients with undifferentiated musculoskeletal low back pain choose the emergency room for help each year! (1) Unless there is cauda equina syndrome demanding surgery or an infection, pain is the issue. How best can a Fort Wayne ER doc help? How can an ER doctor deliver higher value care? (2) Imaging and medication. What can the Fort Wayne chiropractic back pain specialist offer? Spinal manipulation and nutrients. Chiropractic has published about successful management of back pain.
EMERGENCY ROOM: IMAGING
The ER does plenty of imaging. One in 3 patients who go to the emergency room for back pain (as opposed to 1 in 4 who go to a primary care physician) gets imaging performed: simple imaging 26%, complex imaging 8.2%. (3) Today’s imaging guidelines do not support this as they say to hold off on imaging for 4-6 weeks of conservative care before imaging. (4) Maybe patients are letting the ER doctors know that they have been using such care already? Not likely since only 34% of patients who visit an ER tell the emergency department physician that they use healthcare options like chiropractors, massage therapy, acupuncture and the like. (5) What about the pain?
EMERGENCY ROOM: MEDICATIONS
Pain relief, it seems, is what they can offer. Researchers have looked at all sorts of pain medication combinations ER doctors have prescribed to see what is effective. What have they found? Stronger pain medication options do not offer much of a difference. Adding baclofen, metaxalone, or tizanidine to ibuprofen doesn’t appear to enhance function or pain any more than placebo plus ibuprofen within a week after an ED visit for acute low back pain. (6,7) Mixing ibuprofen and acetaminophen did not reduce pain scores or the need for other analgesic pain meds compared with either ibuprofen or acetaminophen alone in emergency room patients with acute musculoskeletal injuries. (8) As a matter of fact, 48% of back pain patients who visit an emergency room for their back pain still had functional impairment 3 months later as well as 42% reported moderate or severe pain. 46% say they’ve used some type of analgesic pain reliever in the day prior. There are short and long-term problems for ER patients with low back pain. (1) This may all be frustrating for emergency department physicians and their patients but not typically for chiropractors and their chiropractic back pain patients. The Fort Wayne chiropractic back pain specialist at Aaron Chiropractic Clinic is armed with the best of chiropractic care for Fort Wayne back pain relief.
CHIROPRACTIC: MANIPULATION AND NUTRIENTS
Your Fort Wayne chiropractor understands. Experience with chiropractic spinal manipulation via The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management with the addition of nutrition like chondroitin sulfate, glucosamine sulfate and curcurmin and turmeric boosts your Fort Wayne chiropractor’s confidence that back pain relief and management for many otherwise frustrated Fort Wayne back pain patients is promising.
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Michael Schneider on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson who shares the goal of the primary spine physician who would be the physician to seek out for back pain issues.
CONTACT Aaron Chiropractic Clinic
Schedule a Fort Wayne chiropractic visit with Aaron Chiropractic Clinic especially if an ER trip has not produced the pain relief you wanted. Fort Wayne chiropractic care has figured out a well-documented and researched way to manage back pain.
