Talk:Back pain

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[edit] Very helpful article

This article is extremely helpful and I was wondering if it is linked to the original Pain article.68.3.214.66 (talk) 07:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Original remarks

This reads like an ad for Johnston-Ruyer Back Therapy, which gets a lot of prominence here, and is linked every time. 213.253.40.2316 13:59, December 2002

This is a very lame article and not much good and inaccurate too Dokane 18:40, 19 October 2004


[edit] Removal of links

I have added two external links with information about back excersices and back risk scales,people with back pain could find it very useful. -- Chirostudent 19 April 2006 9:55 (UTC)

Someone deleted two external links that I added to this page on April 19 . I want to say that I found them as very interesting resources. The first one talks about the back pain risk scale and shows people what to do to prevent it. The second one leads to a page with some very useful exercises. I think that practicing a correct exercises routine people with back pain can find a very helpful way to relieve it. If someone wants to remove my content again I would love to be asked before because I consider top quality the content added on this page and my intention is to keep people well informed about this illness.

--Chirostudent 19 May 2006 21:39 (UTC)

I still don't understand why someone keeps removing the links that I post here, I am not spamming, I am not trying to vandalize this topic on Wikipedia, I really want the sites that I posted online, my interest is to bring people the best help they can get and it the link to the back pain exercises was removed again. Please discuss it with me before to remove it again. Thanks Chirostudent 22:08, 13 October 2006


[edit] Tension Myositis Syndrome

--Changed Dr. Sarno text-- My understanding is that Dr. Sarno's beliefs and approach to treatment are not widely practiced or supported in the medical community, so I changed the text that represented those as statements of fact and referenced and article that presents an alternative view in the debate.

You should sign your talk posts with four tildes as stated in the wikipedia rules, but thanks also for the new reference on Dr. Sarno. And, the number of physicians subscribing to Dr. Sarno's approach is steadily increasing, frequently because he has cured their own back pain, as with Dr. Marc Sopher, Dr. Scott Brady, Dr. David Schechter, or Dr. Andrea Leonard-Segal among others. His latest book, The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders, 2006, [1] includes chapters by six other physicians. Ralphyde 09:42, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe that this article is clearer without specific reference to the qualifications of Dr. Sarno--a reference to his theory is sufficient. The establishment of Dr. Sarno's theories by peer-reviewed citation might justify their inclusion to what is intended to be the most general treatment of the subject. Ghostoroy 19:29, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

To remove all references to the pioneering and highly successful work of Dr. Sarno and his followers from a discussion of back pain would be like removing all references to Freud in a discussion of psychology. Dr. Sarno, who is still seeing patients at age 83, has perhaps the best record for relieving back pain of any medical practioner in the world, having totally healed tens of thousands of patients in person and through his four books on the subject. He believes that 90% of back pain is stress related tension myositis syndrome and has a 90% cure rate for those who accept this diagnosis. [2] He continues as a Professor of Clinical Rehabilitation Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine and attending physician at their Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. He's been a practicing physician since 1950, and developed his successful techniques through long experience with thousands of chronic back pain sufferers for whom conventional medical approaches weren't working. I suggest that doubters read some of the hundreds of reviews of his pioneering books at Amazon.com, [3] and watch the 20/20 segment [4] about his work. Back pain sufferers need to know of this highly successful alternative to surgery and drugs. Ralphyde 17:43, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The efficacy of Dr. Sarno's methods has not been established to the degree that Dr. Freud's has in psychology, nor is Dr. Sarno's name presently a "household name" with which the study of back pain will always be associated. His theory may deserve inclusion in this article--it survives my edit--but the listing of Dr. Sarno's qualifications upsets its balance: these topics can be treated in the linked article on the theory itself. Further, the passage in question belongs in the "causes" section and not in the introductory material. Changes concerning Dr. Sarno have been reverted several times in the history of this article, is compromise possible? Ghostoroy 20:39, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Listen, Ghostoroy, it's not considered good Wikiquette to just remove a cited paragraph without discussion, and you have done that three times now in one day. Why are you so intent on removing all references to Dr. Sarno? What is your interest in 'back pain' if I may ask?
I believe that a person going to a reference like Wikipedia to find out about back pain, is in all likelihood a person suffering from back pain, and some back pain can be extremely painful and debilitating. Shouldn't that person be able to find out the alternative treatments that work, especially those with the best results? Dr. Sarno's long experience working with back pain patients has given him an especially successful treatment which people need to know about so they can end their suffering before they resort to surgery, which is much less successful, and frequently leads to "failed back syndrome," where the pain continues after the surgery because a TMS diagnosis wasn't considered.
The medical-industrial complex, which focuses on surgery and drugs and has a $50 billion business going, hasn't been enthusiastic about adopting Dr. Sarno's approach because they have been taught since Descartes' bargain with the Pope to treat the body as a machine and look for physical causes for physical symptoms. The ones who have finally adopted Dr. Sarno's very successful approach have been for the most part those he has actually cured of their own chronic back pain with his mindbody treatment. These include Dr. Marc Sopher, Dr. David Schechter, Dr. Scott Brady, and Dr. Andrea Leonard-Segal among others. Have you checked out those references I gave you above? Please continue the discussion if you like rather than deleting cited material. Ralphyde 04:23, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of some text

I removed some text from this article:

  1. "Stairs are also a contributing factor because small muscles at the knee are overworked by the stereotyped repetitive motion. (As opposed to going up or down a real hill involves much more varied muscle movements). Note that it is now never recommended that anyone walk or run down stairs for exercise, ever, only up! "Paradoxical movements" in which muscles lower weights can be very effective exercise because they work the muscles harder, but this means that going down stairs is simply too much strain on a few isolated muscles, and an invitation to athletic injury. (We'd all be healthier, and have better backs, if the escalators in subway systems took us down, and let us walk up the stairs. Fewer tumbles would result, too, as paradoxical motion is less easily controlled.)" - this was removed as it was about the knees and stairs, not about the back.
  2. Description of how Johnston-Ruyer Back Therapy is done - There is another entry for this therapy and there is no need to explain it in this article. If someone wants to know more about it, they can click the wikilink and get tons more info than the description here gave.

Epolk June 28, 2005 23:43 (UTC)

[edit] changed entire page

I am relatively new to wikipedia and so I hope I have not made too many mistakes, but I found myself compelled to change this page because it lacked vital information about back pain (such as underlying conditions that cause it and a range of typical treatment alternatives) and presented incorrect information (such as routine advice to use inversion therapy for back pain, which has not been proven in the medical literature to have beneficial results), and was poorly structured - more of a treatise to a specific belief about how to treat back pain than a balanced overview of back pain.

I have not had time to put all revelant information in and to find all the right references but will try to do that later. I hope this draft is a useful one that now can be continually edited by all to be a more useful resource.


[edit] External Links

Can we add this link under extarnal links? This site is FREE (Non commercial) and managed by health professionals. Hope this link will be useful for everyone. Manjubalaw 19:51, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Added back link to spine-health.com - this site is referenced in the text of the article (#2), but has hundreds of pages of articles on the topic, which cannot be included on this page, but should be linked to for people who want to read more about a topic, such as degenerative discs or herniated discs. This is in accordance with the Wiki rule about "what should be linked to". It is a credible site with more information on it than any other site I hvae found.

[edit] The treatments on this page need links to supporting evidence

There are a number of unsupported recommendations on this page. I added the references to TENS, which are not favorable. Eventually, the treatments should be divided into those with underlying evidence that supports their benefit versus those with underlying evidence that show lack of benefit. Badgettrg 19:08, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Good point. -- Fyslee 23:27, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits done to the treatment section:

  • there were no references
  • treatments without supporting empiric evidence were presented indistinguishably from useful treatments.

So...

  • I added many references, especially using the {{Cochrane Collaboration]].
  • I divided the non-surgical treatments into two sections, treatments with and those without supporting evidence.

Persisting problems:

  • I do not like surgery being in its own section apart from the dichotomy above.
  • there are some text I would like to remove because there is no supporting evidence cited and is an opinion only. However, I have not removed these.
  • The section still does not read well.

Badgettrg 08:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Good work! -- Fyslee 10:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Back pain and low back pain

Seems the articles Back pain and low back pain need to be merged? Badgettrg 09:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Seems both titles should remain, but as most of the back pain article concerns low back pain, that content should be moved to low back pain.Badgettrg 13:54, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

What about upper back pain and lumbago? Ralphyde 19:07, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely not. They're not a direct relationship to each other. Lower back pain is always back pain, but back pain isn't always lower back pain. I, myself, have a thoracic back problem which has nothing to do with the lumbar vertebrae. Tommyinla 03:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Disagree. The articles should not be merged. In fact, as there is an article for both Upper Back Pain and Low Back Pain, alll we need is an article for Cervical Back Pain and make this a disambiguation page!
PS. "Lumbago" already exists, it is redirected to "Low Back Pain". TinyMark 19:35, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Strong DON'T MERGE! Perhaps there are other kinds of back pain besides what each of the three specific categories encompasses (cervical, lower, upper); i.e., perhaps some conditions transcend all 3 categories, and would be best included under a general article for all back pain, instead of assuming that all Wiki users have the medical knowledge to know where to look, or where to go to quickly find it. ---Shanoman —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.40.34.107 (talk) 23:44, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Back pain and low back pain and lumbar disc herniation

Two very important articles came out today in the New England Journal of Medicine about surgery for back pain. However, it is impossible to easily add this to WikiPedia - should the content go in low back pain, back pain, lumbago, or under lumbar disc herniation and spinal stenosis? Consequently, I aggregated the surgical content from low back pain and back pain and placed in the appropriate specific disease such as lumbar disc herniation and spinal stenosis. Now surgical information only needs to go in under the disease that is being treated.

Hope this is ok, feel free to revert if not, but better would be if you can find a better way to organize these sections. Badgettrg 15:37, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is this article an advertisement for Cochrane?

I am not an expert in this field but I'm pretty sure that some people or organizations are doing research on back pain besides the good people at Cochrane. If so, why is (almost?) every reference for this group? I believe it weakens the article to have such a lack of diverse links. Can someone help by replacing some/most of the Cochrane links with studies from elsewhere? Thanks, Hu Gadarn 19:53, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I do not think you should not delete Cochrane links; that would be censoring and would not make sense. Whereas if you want to add alternative sources, that would be great - especially if they disagree.Badgettrg
I don't understand the objection to Cochrane - it's got a PMID number, suggesting it's not vanity or professional press. Is Cochrane not a scientific journal? WLU 19:46, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article could use a section on suggestions for immediate response to back injuries

Hi. I believe this article would benefit if there was a section describing what people could/should do when first suffering a back injury. Should people lie down? Take a bath? Immediately rush to the hospital (and if so, under what conditions)? Thanks, Hu Gadarn 19:53, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a how-to guide. Could be integrated as non-proscriptive chunk of info, or if refs could be found, how each step acts to reduce the injury. WLU 19:47, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Should there be a section for "Famous Suffers" (of Chronic Back Pain)?

Other chronic ailments pages on wikipedia often have a list of famous sufferers. I think I recall John F Kennedy had chronic back pain problems for all of his life (this is mentioned a bit on the wikipedia page, and can be found via google searches). Also, I believe that Shah Rukh Khan also suffers from constant back pain. --85.92.161.25 20:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

It would need sources as per WP:BIO, but in addition, it's not particularly encyclopedic unless it impacted their lives significantly or illustrates a point on the page. WLU 06:25, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing something here.

"Medications, such as muscle relaxants,[15] narcotics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs/NSAIAs)[16] or paracetamol (acetaminophen)."

This sentence no verb. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 14:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Context ok but fix. WLU (talk) 14:59, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Acupressure

I removed the following here for discussion. It appears slightly promotional, and I suspect a conflict of interest given the editors other contribution. The sources certainly don't verify the information, nor can they be used as reliable sources for such information. There seems to be considerable original research/synthesis here, as well as a lack of balance:

* Acupressure is more effective in reducing lower back pain than standard physical therapies. The effects of the therapy which involves applying pressure on points stimulated by acupuncture. Acupressure devices such as Tibetan Applicator are effective alone or used in combination with Chinese physical therapies and with techniques that teach the muscles to regain the original shape they had before injury.

--Ronz (talk) 18:25, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Block-quoted to make it a bit more separate and tracked down some better referencing. The second seems to support accupressure being better than physical therapy, but is it physical therapy, or 'Chinese' physical therapy? Also, 'is' more effective is pretty strong for two studies, one of which doesn't have an abstract. And what's with the Tibetan thing? There's also some replies I can't seem to access. I agree with the OR comment (lacking further information) WLU (talk) 00:57, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Also note that based on this, I believe the full Frost article, accupressure is actually quite unsupported by the medical orthodoxy. WLU (talk) 01:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)