Your idea of what healthcare should be or should not be may
determine whether you can enjoy the benefits of conservative care or carry the
scars of surgery.
One study shows that the healthier the personal habits are
of a doctor the recommendations they make are more likely to be for lifestyle
modifications than relying solely on medication or surgery. This concept leads
us to a second study and the purpose of this article.
A separate study shows that if a patient with low back pain
sees a surgeon as their first choice in doctors then that patient is more
likely to have surgery for their low back complaints than if they had seen a
Doctor of Chiropractic as their first choice in doctors. The figures are
significant with 42.7% of the patients who saw a surgeon first being scheduled
for surgery compared to only 1.5% of the patients who saw a Doctor of
Chiropractic as their first choice in doctors. Interestingly, these figures held true even when
the severity of the injury and other factors were taken into consideration.
In other words, choose a Doctor of Chiropractic for your
first contact when you are seeking relief from low back pain otherwise you may
end up with less than satisfactory results and a permanent scar on your back. It
is clear that the treatment philosophies of various doctors dictate the type of
treatment they recommend for their patients.
An old saying goes, “Surgeons do what surgeons are taught to
do.” Apparently, studies are proving the truthfulness of that old saying.
The cost of surgery is much greater than the expense
associated with conservative chiropractic care so politicians and bureaucrats
involved with healthcare cost containment may become interested in making
healthcare decisions based upon the overall cost of various treatment
modalities and techniques. This is becoming more obvious as emerging studies
become available and even the Mayo Clinic has recognized that back surgery is
only indicated in a small percentage of cases.
The choice of expensive surgery or more moderately priced
chiropractic care is significant because the direct cost of treating low back
pain in the United States in the year 2004 was $193.9 BILLION dollars!
It is because of these factors that researchers delved into
various forms of records such as medical bills, administrative claims, medical
record review documents, and even performed telephone interviews with patients
who had undergone low back surgery to determine the potential variables
involved in learning how to predict who would have low back surgery and who
would not.
In looking at low back injuries suffered on the job it
became apparent that a worker’s initial score on the Roland-Morris Disability
Questionnaire (RMDQ) proved to be one of the most striking predictors of who
would have surgery or not. If a worker had an initial score on the RMDQ that
was 17 or higher on the 0-24 scale then they were six times more likely to have
surgery compared to workers whose initial score on the RMDQ was in the 0-8
range. Apparently, if they were in more pain or disabled to a greater degree it
led them to believe that a much more radical treatment such as relatively expensive
surgery was necessary. The end result being that conservative (and less
expensive) chiropractic care was not initially considered and many more injured
workers went to surgery instead of avoiding it by utilizing conservative
chiropractic care.
