Elgin Chiropractic Care Instead of an Emergency Room Visit and Pain Meds for Back Pain
Emergency room physicians are trying to figure out what is best to offer back pain patients who come to the ER for help. It’s a quandry for them, especially since almost 3 million such patients with undifferentiated musculoskeletal low back pain choose the emergency room for help annually! (1) Unless there is cauda equina syndrome demanding surgery or an infection, pain is the issue. How best can a Elgin ER doc help? How can an ER doctor provide higher value care? (2) Imaging and medication. What can the Elgin chiropractic back pain specialist offer? Spinal manipulation and nutrients. Chiropractic has published about successful management of back pain.
EMERGENCY ROOM: IMAGING
The ER does lots of imaging. One in 3 patients who go to the emergency department for back pain (compared to 1 in 4 who visit a primary care physician) has imaging performed: simple imaging 26%, complex imaging 8.2%. (3) Today’s imaging guidelines don’t support this as they recommend holding 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? Probably not as only 34% of patients who go to an ER share with 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 a variety of pain medication combinations ER doctors have used to see what is effective. What have they found? Stronger pain medication options don’t offer much of a difference. Adding baclofen, metaxalone, or tizanidine to ibuprofen doesn’t seem 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) Combining ibuprofen and acetaminophen didn’t 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 go to an ER for their back pain continued to experience 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 last day. There are short and long-term problems for ER patients with low back pain. (1) This might be frustrating for emergency department physicians and their patients but not always for chiropractors and their chiropractic back pain patients. The Elgin chiropractic back pain specialist at Connected Chiropractic is armed with the best of chiropractic care for Elgin back pain relief.
CHIROPRACTIC: MANIPULATION AND NUTRIENTS
Your Elgin chiropractor gets it. 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 supports your Elgin chiropractor’s confidence that back pain relief and management for many otherwise frustrated Elgin back pain patients is promising.
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Michael Schneider on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson who describes the role of the primary spine physician who would be the physician to turn to for back pain issues.
CONTACT Connected Chiropractic
Schedule a Elgin chiropractic visit with Connected Chiropractic especially if an ER visit has not resulted in the pain relief you wanted. Elgin chiropractic care has shared a well-documented and researched way to manage back pain.
