Study of back pain

Study shows: back problems are not to be taken lightly

“Back problems are not to be trifled with!” A piece of advice that many Germans have already received. And yet it does not wear out, simply because it is accurate. Back pain should not be ignored under any circumstances, and lying idly in bed rarely helps. Because it has been proven that movement generally helps the back - even if pain pills are sometimes needed in the beginning in order to be able to perform any movement at all.

This is also confirmed by a recently published study by the US Army, which also provides interesting findings for the rest of the population. The main focus here is on the subject of back problems and their physiotherapeutic treatment. The study shows: Patients with the first back problems should start physiotherapy as soon as possible and not delay it.

Physiotherapy rewarding for patients & insurance

The study draws on a database of over ten million people who have health insurance through the military and therefore allows generally valid conclusions. In the years 2007 to 2009 alone, 750,000 insured persons consulted a doctor for the first time because of lower back complaints. On average, these people were 37 years old.

Only 123,000 of them started physiotherapy afterwards and only one in four of them started doing it in the first two weeks after diagnosis.

The study analyzed how the patients felt in the following years after their first visit to the doctor. For example, insured persons who started physiotherapy after 14 days at the latest had to be operated on “significantly less frequently”, injected against their pain, given painkillers or pushed into a computer tomograph. And: Your further treatment cost the insurance an average of 60 percent less than that of the insured, who started treatment or exercises well after the diagnosis.

Benefits of physiotherapy not well known?

Overall, patients who took physiotherapy treatment early needed significantly less pain medication than patients who were not prescribed physiotherapy at all.

Physiotherapists who are trained in Germany at vocational schools such as the WBS schools within three years therefore, as the study clearly shows, play a very central role in the treatment of back pain. It is not without reason that politicians are now thinking about upgrading the position of physiotherapists by granting them the right to judge which applications their patients need without medical guidance.

But not everyone seems to have recognized how important and effective the work of physiotherapists is. The US Army study also shows that, with 750,000 insured persons, only a good half of all those who were prescribed physiotherapy for back problems actually used it. 42 percent of patients with back problems simply let their referrals lapse.