Chronic Back Pain
Something that we deal with all the time. Back pain is one of the worst kinds of pain in my opinion because it can completely destroy your quality of life. You may be able to get to work and get through the day, but you will avoid anything fun in your life including potentially loosing out on amazing opportunities with your children and significant other that you will never be able to get back.
Many times people who have been suffering with chronic back pain come in to me after months or even years of taking medications to help with the pain. I found this research particularly interesting. As someone who avoids pain killers at all cost, I do not have personal experience. However, I would have assumed that opioid drugs would work better than others just from general knowledge of what they do to the brain. This perception I believe is very common in society as well so pay attention…
The Minneapolis Veterans Administration recently looked for information about opioid use in relation to back pain and found no randomized trials that identified function or quality of life outcomes. Since their job is to make people better they wanted to know how well they worked to help them decide what form of treatment to prescribe to the patients. They decided to develop and perform a study to find out the effect that these pain killers had on quality of life of people. It took place over a 30 month period. The working hypothesis was that opioids would give better relief than non-opiod pain relievers. The 240 patients studied had chronic back pain that was rated as moderate to severe.
The Opioids Studied….
Morphine, hydrocodone, or oxycodone and transdermal fentanyl. The non opioid drugs studied were acetaminophen (Tylenol family) and Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs – NSAID (aspirin / ibuprophen family). Each patient was studied for 12 months and they rated their pain on a scale of 1 – 10 and a checklist of 19 medication related symptoms.
The relevant outcomes of the study are that:
Relative to pain, there were no significant differences between the 2 groups over 12 months. The mean scores were 3.4 in opioid group and 3.3 in the non opioid group:
To pain intensity the non opioid group had significantly less pain over 12 months that the opioid group.
Relative to function, a greater than 30% change over the 12 months happened in 59% of the opioid group vs 53.9% in the non opioid group.
Adverse outcomes the opioid group had significantly more medication related symptoms over the 12 months than the non-opioid group.
The conclusion of the study is that neither method is probably the answer to chronic back pain as neither one showed significant reduction in symptoms over a 12 month period.
So What Should You Do?
If you or someone you know is suffering from chronic back pain who are taking medication hoping it goes away, this study would suggest that the long term outlook for that outcome is not great. A much better option is to come in to this office for a consultation. We have been specialized in treating severe and chronic back pain for almost 10 years and we have amazing tools at our disposal which have given us a 92.3% success rate in working with this condition. Next week we will highlight some of the tools we use to combat this lifestyle killer. Mention this newsletter when you call and you will receive the initial consultation at no charge. Call 402-333-4848 now to get the answers you need today!
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