You have all heard it, “Once you go to a Chiropractor, you always have to go.”  Why would someone want to continue going to a Chiropractor for life, to have this be a piece of their overall wellness plan?  Some interesting research has just come out with an answer in the form people like to see:  blinded placebo controlled study.

Does Maintained Spinal Manipulation Therapy for Chronic Non-specific Low Back Pain Result in Better Long Term Outcome? That is the question this new study asked in the prestigous journal, Spine.

The answer is a resounding YES!!

This new, single blinded placebo controlled study, conducted by the Faculty of Medicine at Mansoura University, conclusively demonstrates that maintenance care provides significant benefits for those with chronic low back pain.

BACKGROUND: Spinal manipulation (SMT) is a common treatment option for low back pain. Numerous clinical trials have attempted to evaluate its effectiveness for different subgroups of acute and chronic LBP previously, but the efficacy of maintenance SMT in chronic non-specific LBP has never been studied.

In this study, 60 patients with chronic, nonspecific LBP lasting at least 6 months were randomized into 3 groups:

1. One third of them received 12 treatments of sham SMT over a one-month period.

2. One third of them received 12 treatments of SMT during a one-month period, with no follow-up care during the next nine months, and

3. One third of them received 12 SMT visits during the first month, followed by “maintenance” SMT every two weeks, for the next nine months.

To determine any difference among these 3 care groups, researchers measured pain and disability scores, generic health status, and back-specific patient satisfaction at baseline, and at 1-month, 4-months, 7-months, and at 10-months

RESULTS: Patients in manipulative groups (groups 2 & 3) experienced significantly lower pain and disability scores than the sham group at the end of the first 1-month period.

At the 10-month follow-up, only the maintenance group maintained improvements in pain and disability, while the group that only received 1-months care had reverted to their pretreatment pain and disability levels.

CONCLUSIONS: This is the first medically managed trial that clearly demonstrates that maintenance care provides significant benefits to those who suffer from chronic low back pain.

This study re-confirms Descarreaux’s virtually identical 2004 JMPT study, which concluded that “This experiment suggests that maintenance spinal manipulations after intensive manipulative care is beneficial to patients to maintain subjective post-intensive treatment disability levels”.

It also confirms the findings of Dr. Ron L. Rupert, in his ground-breaking JMPT article, titled:

Maintenance Care: Health Promotion Services Administered to US Chiropractic Patients Aged 65 and Older, Part II which found that:

“The cost of health care for patients receiving MC in this study was far less than that for patients of similar age in the general population, despite the doubling of physician visits (medical plus chiropractic). The greatest difference in health care costs with patients receiving MC was in the areas of nursing care and, especially, hospital care. This reduced need for hospital and nursing home services has recently been corroborated by the research of Coulter et al..” [22]

SOURCE: Does Maintained Spinal Manipulation Therapy for Chronic Non-specific Low Back Pain Result in Better Long Term Outcome?

Spine (Phila Pa 1976). 2011 Jan 17. [Epub ahead of print]

Dr. Stephanie Maj has a thriving family practice in the heart of Chicago. Her clinic is located at 1442 W. Belmont Ave., 1E, Chicago, IL 60657. 773.528.8485. www.communitychiropractic.net

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