I putting this as this weeks topic of the week ^[1].

Sunday Homitz LPT of Body Technic Systems ^[2] brought this to my attention.  It was published this week in the Plain Dealer:

Originally published as “Study: Back pain treatment does harm”

By Diane Suchetka

Doctors have been costing the health-care system tens of billions of dollars a year and, in many cases, doing more harm than good because they’re not following recommended guidelines for treating back pain.

Instead of prescribing physical therapy and non-narcotic drugs such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen, they’ve been ordering expensive scans, giving patients narcotics and referring them to specialists, presumably for surgery or other medical procedures.

They’ve been doing that despite earlier research that shows non-narcotic drugs and physical therapy alleviate most back pain within three months, expensive tests and treatment do little in most cases and 43 percent of those with chronic back pain who are on narcotics also have substance-abuse problems.

Read the full article on cleveland.com ^[3]

Medical Treatment for Back Pain Is Wasting Billions of Dollars