Dealing with acute lower back pain can feel like a solitary journey, but it doesn’t have to be. Physical therapy stands out as a beacon of hope, offering not just immediate relief but also a pathway to long-term recovery. Here’s how seeing one of the physical therapists in Visalia or Hanford can save you a lot of time, money, and unnecessary suffering.

Recent studies have shown that choosing physical therapy as the first line of treatment can save patients significant amounts in healthcare costs. For instance, the American Physical Therapy Association’s report reveals that physical therapy can result in average net savings of $4,160 per episode of care when compared to other treatment options for conditions like acute lower back pain.

Understanding the Impact of Acute Lower Back Pain

Acute lower back pain is more than just an inconvenience; it’s a global issue affecting millions each year. The discomfort can range from a dull, constant ache to a sudden, sharp sensation, making everyday activities seem daunting. While the causes vary, the urgency for effective, non-invasive treatments remains constant.

The Physical Therapy Advantage

Physical therapy isn’t merely about symptom management; it’s about treating the root cause and prevention of pain in the future too. Here’s how it makes a profound difference:

1. Tailored Treatment Plans: Physical therapists assess each individual’s specific condition, crafting personalized treatment plans. This approach ensures that each movement and exercise directly targets the source of the pain, promoting a faster and more sustainable recovery.
2. Pain Reduction and Improved Mobility: Through a combination of manual therapy, strengthening exercises, and flexibility routines, physical therapy helps in reducing pain and enhancing mobility. This proactive approach not only alleviates discomfort but also improves overall functionality, allowing individuals to return to their daily routines with ease.
3. Preventing Future Episodes: One of the most significant aspects of physical therapy is its focus on education and future injury prevention. Patients learn proper body mechanics, posture correction, and exercises that they can incorporate into their daily lives, significantly reducing the risk of future back pain episodes.
4. Economic Efficiency: Opting for physical therapy can lead to substantial cost savings. By reducing the need for expensive medical procedures and minimizing the reliance on pain medications, patients can enjoy a more cost-effective route to back pain management.

Embracing a Pain-Free Future

Physical therapy represents a holistic, patient-centered approach to acute lower back pain management. Its benefits extend beyond immediate pain relief, offering long-term solutions and preventive strategies that empower individuals to lead a pain-free life.

In the journey towards overcoming acute lower back pain, physical therapy stands out as a comprehensive, economical, and empowering treatment option, ensuring that patients not only recover but also thrive.

For an in-depth understanding of the economic and health benefits of physical therapy, refer to the detailed analysis in the APTA report.

If You Are Suffering With Acute Lower Back Pain, We Have Two Convenient Locations – Contact Us Today!

References:

• APTA’s “The Economic Value of Physical Therapy” Report: This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the costs and benefits of physical therapy across various conditions, including acute lower back pain.
• APTA Report

By incorporating these insights and strategies, individuals dealing with acute lower back pain can embark on a transformative journey towards recovery, backed by the expert care and guidance of physical therapy professionals.

Positive Lifestyle Behaviors And Emotional Factors Can Improve Resilience in Patients With Low Back Pain

If you are suffering with lower back pain on the left, right, or across and down a leg, here’s something that might help with mindset…from our back pain treatment experts in Visalia.  Of course, I’m referring to our doctors of physical therapy.

Half Experience This Problem – Here’s Some Background

Low back pain is extremely common. About one-half of all working Americans will experience symptoms at least once per year, and roughly 31 million are affected by it at any given point in time. It is also the leading cause of years lived with disability worldwide. So if you’ve dealt with low back pain at any point, you’re far from alone.

Dealing with low back pain can be troublesome and place a strain on everyday life, as many typical movements—like bending over to pick something off the ground or twisting your torso when looking to the side—can become strenuous or difficult. In addition, up to two-thirds of patients with low back pain report having persistent pain one year later, which can make matters worse.

Searching for Back Pain Treatment in Visalia? We Offer a Long-Term Solution

This highlights the need to identify solutions that will help relieve the years of suffering that can be associated with low back pain. Physical therapy and other nonsurgical interventions are typically recommended as the first line of treatment for low back pain, but since the origins of pain are complex and derived from physical, mental, and social factors, a multifaceted approach that addresses these varied factors may be most effective.

Resilience – It Means More than Just Putting Up with the Pain

Resilience is a dynamic process that relates to a patient’s ability to adapt and adjust to adversity, which results in either recovery or sustainability of the adverse circumstance. This concept is one our back pain treatment experts in Visalia apply. It’s likely to be applicable because it takes the focus away from the negative components of the condition, and places it instead on the positive components to show patients that recovery is possible.

The Research

Therefore, a study was conducted to evaluate the relationship between lifestyle behaviors and emotional health factors on low back pain resilience, which was assessed through recovery and sustainability. Researchers administered a survey to 1,065 twins who had low back pain for at least one day in the previous three months at the start of the study. The survey was used to gather information and create a lifestyle behavior score (based on body mass index, activity engagements, sleep quality, smoking and alcohol use) and emotional health score (based on the absence of depression, perceived stress, active coping). Follow-up surveys were administered every 2–3 years to compare these scores with the primary outcomes of low back pain resilience assessed as recovery and sustainability of maintaining high levels of function despite having low back pain.

Although no relationship was found between the lifestyle behavioral score and the emotional health score to a likelihood of recovery from low back pain, there was a positive association between these scores and greater levels of sustainability of function despite having low back pain. The results suggest that people who adopt positive lifestyle behaviors and positive emotional factors are more likely to be resilient and more likely to maintain high levels of function despite having low back pain episodes.

Our Back Pain Experts Address Both Lifestyle & Emotional Health

Patients with low back pain are therefore encouraged to focus on addressing both lifestyle behaviors and emotional health factors—such as those identified in this study—in addition to physical interventions to improve their ability to sustain their pain and function better.

Contact Our Back Pain Treatment Experts in Visalia…and Hanford Too

If you’re dealing with low back pain and are looking for additional guidance, we can help. Contact Bacci & Glinn Physical Therapy at 559-733-2478 (Visalia) or 559-582-1027 (Hanford) for more information or to schedule an appointment today.  Click here to visit our contact page for details.

Patients’ And Healthcare Providers’ Perceptions On Back Pain Do Not Always Align

Low back pain is jarringly common. About one-half of all working Americans will experience related symptoms at least once every year, and roughly 31 million are affected by it at any given point in time. In essence, low back pain is just “one of those things” that we will all probably face in the eventual future if we haven’t already faced.

Dealing with low back pain can be troublesome and place a strain on everyday life. Typical movements like bending over to pick something off the ground or twisting your torso when looking to the side might suddenly give you pause and make you less mobile. This regular reminder naturally leads to frustration and often creates a shift in focus to one question: “what’s causing my pain?”

As a result, many patients with low back pain start to place a particularly strong—sometimes unhealthy—emphasis on obtaining a diagnosis. This desire may be explained by several factors, such as the assumption that the diagnosis will provide a clear explanation of what is causing the pain and what treatments will improve it, even though this is rarely true. Nonetheless, not receiving a diagnosis can lead to anger and frustration in patients who feel that they are not being heard or understood. Some healthcare providers may also experience frustration with low back pain patients who expect their problem to be “fixed” by certain interventions, regardless of how realistic these expectations are.

Healthcare providers underestimate the importance of an explanation for pain

A study was therefore conducted to evaluate the expectations of patients with low back pain and compare these expectations to the assumptions of the healthcare providers who treat them. This was a survey-based study, which administered one survey to 419 patients who were visiting a doctor for low back pain for the first time. In addition to questions about demographics and pain characteristics, this survey included 8 variables frequently related to the medical care of low back pain (eg, improvement in pain/function, explanation of what is causing the pain, diagnostic testing, medication, physical therapy, and surgery), which patients were asked to rank in terms of personal importance on a 5-point scale. A similar survey was given to 198 healthcare providers, who were asked to rank the same 8 variables in terms of their importance to patients.

Patients considered an explanation for what is causing their pain to be far more important

Results showed that both patients and healthcare providers attributed similar—and high—levels of importance to the improvement of pain and the improvement of function; however, there were also several key differences in the assessment of expectations. Patients considered an explanation for what is causing their pain to be far more important than healthcare providers believed, while patients attributed much less importance to diagnostic tests, medications, and surgery compared to healthcare providers. This suggests that healthcare providers are more driven to act by ordering tests and administering treatments for their patients, while patients appear to be more interested in receiving a diagnosis.

Unfortunately, a clear diagnosis for low back pain is not always possible, or helpful.

Approximately 70–80% of all low back pain cases do not have a specific identifiable cause and are classified instead as “non-specific back pain,” which patients could contribute to patients’ frustration because it does not explain their pain. It’s also worth noting that some apparent back pain diagnoses—like a herniated disc—may not truly be responsible for the patient’s pain, which can lead to unnecessary and unhelpful treatments being undertaken.

Nonetheless, this study shows that it is essential for healthcare providers to clearly communicate with patients and educate them on the nature of low back pain, particularly by explaining that not all pain is dangerous or a reflection of injury.

As physical therapists, we incorporate these methods into our practice, and explain to each of our patients with low back pain that a diagnosis is usually less important than they might think. Instead, we start patients on a comprehensive treatment program right away that will address their pain and functional limitations without the need for other diagnostic tests that could possibly do more harm than good.

Contact Us Today for Help

So, if you’re dealing with low back pain, we invite you to contact Bacci & Glinn Physical Therapy at 559-733-2478 (Visalia) or 559-582-1027 (Hanford) to learn more or schedule an appointment today.

Opioid Use Persists In Many Patients After Common Spine Surgery

The prevalence of pain is far greater in the spine than anywhere else in the body. In fact, back pain ranks only behind skin disorders and osteoarthritis/joint disorders in top reasons to visit a doctor. Up to 80% of the general population will experience at least one episode of back pain in their lives, and about 65 million Americans report dealing with a back-related issue recently. So, if your back is bothering you right now, you’re far from alone.

Most cases of back pain will resolve on their own over time, and studies consistently show that patients with persistent or chronic back pain can improve from conservative interventions like physical therapy. But research has also shown that opioids represent one of the most prescribed treatments for back pain, either along with other conservative interventions or independently. The high risk for abuse and addiction with opioids is well documented by now, and these drugs also fail to truly resolve patients’ pain by only masking the sensation and tricking the brain that it has dissipated.

Surgical procedures like lumbar spinal fusion—which joins together two moveable bones in the lower back—is typically regarded as a last resort for chronic back pain, but rates of this surgery have been steadily increasing over the past few decades.

In addition, up to 70% of patients who decide to have surgery have already begun taking opioids by this point, with nearly 20% being dependent on opioids prior to their procedure. The use of opioids may affect outcomes, and most patients would prefer to not take opioids for an extended period after their procedure. But statistics show that continual use is somewhat common, both in patients taking opioids before surgery and in those who do not.

More than one in three patients are taking opioids six months after surgery

Therefore, a study was conducted to determine how many patients who undergo lumbar spinal fusion continue to take opioids in the long term. This type of study was called a systematic review, in which researchers performed a comprehensive search of four major medical databases to identify relevant studies that tracked the use of opioids in patients for at least six months after a lumbar spinal fusion procedure. A total of 329 studies were identified in the search that met all inclusion criteria. Of these, only 32 (9.7%) included data on the use of opioids, and only 21 (6.4% of all included studies) tracked the use of opioids for at least six months.

Analysis of this data revealed that the long-term use of opioids after surgery varied greatly from 6% to 86%. The average across all studies was 35%, with an average follow-up of 34 months. This suggests that more than one in three patients were taking opioids for at least six months after undergoing lumbar spinal fusion. The percentage of patients who were on opioids before the procedure also varied substantially, from 23% to 76%.

Based on these findings, it appears that many patients who have spine surgery continue to rely on opioids for pain relief for six months or more after their procedure. This contradicts with most patients’ expectations, as it is a common conception that surgery will automatically alleviate pain and eliminate the need for continual pain medication.

This information is particularly valuable for patients with chronic low back pain who are weighing the pros and cons of surgery.

While surgeries like lumbar spinal fusion may be appropriate and beneficial for certain patients, this study shows that it may not always lead to the outcomes that most patients expect, and it could maintain or create a reliance on opioids in the long term. For these reasons, we believe physical therapy is a much safer and more effective option for most cases of low back pain, since it can often produce long-term relief without the need for opioids.

Experiencing Lower Back Pain? Give Physical Therapy a Try

If you’re dealing with low back pain, we invite you to contact Bacci & Glinn Physical Therapy at 559-733-2478 (Visalia) or 559-582-1027 (Hanford) to learn more or to schedule an appointment today.