Physical therapy benefits for back pain appear modest: study

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A study suggests that benefits for early physical therapy for lower back pain are only modest.

A new study published in the Journal of American Medical Association looked at the benefits of early physical therapy for patients suffering from lower back pain (LBP). It was led by Julie Fritz from the College of Health at the University of Utah.

For the research, Fritz and her team looked at the data of more than 200 patients between March 2011 and November 2013. Nearly half of the participants underwent physical therapy while the other half received the usual care for lower back pain. After three months, the researchers followed up on the participants.

They found that the physical therapy group was able to perform daily tasks such as sitting, walking and lifting more easily. However, the level of pain is roughly the same with the other group that after one year observation, the difference is not significant enough to be considered "clinically important," according to NPR.

"We found that patients in both groups improved rapidly. Rapid and substantial improvement by most patients with acute LBP limits treatment effects in early intervention studies. We detected a modest difference favoring early physical therapy that was better than the natural history of acute LBP for the primary outcome at 3-month follow-up," the authors wrote, as reported by Medical Xpress. However, the between-group difference did not achieve the threshold for minimum clinically important difference. Furthermore, differences were mostly undetectable by 1 year."

The findings of the research do not mean that physical therapy cannot help some patients. Fritz says that patients who do go to the doctor for their lower back pain may only need the reassurance of their healthcare provider that there is nothing wrong. For patients who need more assistance, physical therapy can be recommended to help improve their mobility and function.

"We get into trouble and we do real potential harm to patients when we accelerate them down a pathway too rapidly and that can end in expensive, invasive procedures that patients really don't want when they start seeking care," Fritz said. "People who feel that they're being treated and cared for will improve a bit more rapidly regardless of what's actually being provided to them."

According to UPI, stress can be a major contributing factor to the pain that people feel. Simply reducing stressors can keep unnecessary medical tests to a minimum.