Doctors Increasingly Ignore Evidence In Treating Back Pain : Shots - Health News : NPR

This study didn't examine why doctors aren't following clinical guidelines for treating back pain, but other studies have found that when doctors own imaging equipment, they are more likely to use it. Doctors should be cut a little slack, a journal commentary accompanying this study says, because guidelines have been conflicted on back pain treatment until recently, and it takes 17 years, on average, for new treatment standards to be widely adopted. But creating checklist-type guidelines for doctors would help speed that process, the commentary says. So would requiring patients to pay more of the cost of expensive imaging, and providing payment incentives for doctors who do the right thing. "For the majority of new-onset back pain [cases], it gets better within three months," Mafi says. "Unfortunately, we don't have fancy treatments that cure it." Time, some ibuprofen and gentle exercise aren't sexy. But they most often do the trick. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/07/30/206910829/doctors-increasingly-ignore-evidence-in-treating-back-pain
Source: Psychology of Pain - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs