People who went to the emergency department because of low back pain didn’t get better pain relief from opioids or muscle relaxants than with a non-prescription painkiller, a randomized trial shows.
Low back pain is responsible for more than 2.5 million visits to U.S. emergency departments each year. Patients are usually treated with acetaminophen, skeletal muscle relaxants and a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) and opioids, often in combination.
Doctors in Bronx, New York, studied 323 patients who arrived at emergency with acute low back pain that started within the previous two weeks. Neither naproxen combined with oxycodone/acetaminophen nor naproxen combined with cyclobenzaprine offered better pain relief after a week or after a month.
Three months after the emergency department visit, almost a quarter of the group said they still felt moderate to severe pain requiring medication.
Thousands of studies have shown the effectiveness of Chiropractic care in treating low back pain. There is no need to suffer. The people in the previous study were still in pain 3 months later. Drugs are not the answer.
