Nashua Chiropractic and Back Pain Relief Expectations via Surgical or Conservative Care

What do you expect from your Nashua chiropractic care of back pain? That is a pivotal question. Research is reporting that it has a role in back pain treatment outcome be the treatment surgical or conservative. Moriarty Chiropractic aspires to listen to you and your expectations of our Nashua back pain treatment and share what our treatment’s outcomes have been in practice and in research.

INFLUENTIAL EXPECTATIONS FOR BACK SURGERY OUTCOMES

A new research project studied patient and surgeon expectations of back surgery. Patients expected full relief and improvement of their back pain after lumbar spine surgery. Surgeons expected improvement that ranged from a little to a lot depending on the patient and his/her specific condition. Can you guess whose expectations were met? The surgeons’ expectations. A couple years after the back surgery, the outcomes reported by patients met the surgeon’s expectations. The researchers emphasized that effective communication about expectations may well further better outcomes. (1) That’s why Moriarty Chiropractic devotes time to each Nashua back pain patient at the beginning of care, ensuring that the source of pain and its treatment plan are well-explained. If not, ask us!

AN ACCEPTABLE SYMPTOM STATE

If a patient does not get the relief he/she desired from back surgery, what is an “acceptable symptom state” for that back pain patient? What can he/she live with? For patients with chronic non-specific low back pain (with or without active discopathy), 54% reported having an acceptable symptom state at 1 month of care. Specifically, patient-reported acceptable symptoms included: 47.5 for lumbar pain, 30.5 for radicular pain, 39.3 for disability, 10.0 for anxiety, and 6.7 for depression. (2) Moriarty Chiropractic knows no pain is the preferred state and is ready to talk with our Nashua chiropractic patients their options and potential outcomes.

DECIDING ON TREATMENT OPTIONS

Deciding whether to have back surgery is a big decision. Evidence-based medicine views the patient as being the center of care. What is the patient perspective of this care? How is the patient perspective taken into consideration in treatment planning and decision making among available options? A new paper indicated that the patient’s social, psychological, and other non-clinical characteristics must be taken into account in planning care. (3) One factor in the back-surgery decision that reportedly impacts the decision and the outcome expectation is opioid use. Lower dose and shorter-time-taking opioid use patients expected more complete improvement compared with non-users. They also had higher expectations of positive outcome than higher-dose opioid patients. (4) For a lot of patients, the prospect of work is goal of back pain treatment which is positive according to this new report on how back pain patient recovery expectations affect clinical outcomes. A review of 60 studies reported that a patient’s recovery expectations are probably strongly associated with future work participation. (5) Moriarty Chiropractic applies effective, nonsurgical treatment of back pain to meet patient expectations once the research on outcomes for other back pain sufferers is presented and understood. Nashua chiropractic care keeps the back pain patient at its center.

CONTACT Moriarty Chiropractic

Check out this PODCAST with Dr. Anthony Galante on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he explained how Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management and chiropractic treatment helped manage back pain for a patient who was adamant about not wanting back surgery.

Make your next Nashua chiropractic visit soon. Moriarty Chiropractic wants to know your answer to the question of your expectations for our treatment so that we can both be satisfied with the outcome!