Physical Therapy May Help Lower Back Pain But Time Works Best

For adults with low back pain fitting a decision rule, early physical therapy is associated with modest improvement in disability compared with usual care, but the improvement is not seen at one-year follow-up, according to a study published online October. 13 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

According to UPI, stress can be a major contributing factor to the pain that people feel.

Objective To evaluate whether early physical therapy (manipulation and exercise) is more effective than usual care in improving disability for patients with LBP fitting a decision rule.

The findings of the research do not mean that physical therapy can not help a few patients.

“People with lower back pain tend to get better quickly, and the physical therapy helped them get there a little quicker”, said lead researcher Julie Fritz, a professor of physical therapy at the University of Utah. However, after a year, no significant difference in function was found between the two groups. There was no improvement in pain intensity at 4-week, 3-month, or 1-year follow-up (between-group difference, -0.42 [95% CI, -0.90 to 0.02] at 4-week follow-up; -0.38 [95% CI, -0.84 to 0.09] at 3-month follow-up; and -0.17 [95% CI, -0.62 to 0.27] at 1-year follow-up). But studies haven’t explored the impact of early physical therapy.

The patients were split into two groups, where half received four sessions of physical therapy and half received usual care.

However, patients shouldn’t go to physical therapy expecting a cure-all, Delitto added.

For more on low back pain, visit the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Without symptoms or evidence of such a condition, however, researchers at the University of Utah found even skipping unnecessary diagnostic tests can help to alleviate the pain by reinforcing the idea that it should go away.

The authors wrote in the study, “We found that patients in both groups improved rapidly”.

Each patient is different, and there are no cookie-cutter solutions to lower-back pain. It offers just modest benefits as the discomfort usually subsidies by itself with time. “We don’t understand that really well yet”, Fritz says.

The researchers observed the participants, who had recent-onset low back pain and were randomly assigned to physical therapy or no treatment for the first 30 days after the starting of their pain. “People who feel that they’re being treated and cared for will improve a bit more rapidly regardless of what’s actually being provided to them”. Rapid and substantial improvement by most patients with acute LBP limits treatment effects in early intervention studies. “It’s indeed something we should try to maximize and take advantage of”.