ISSA PHYSICAL THERAPY

Neck pain is one of the top 10 reasons for a patient to visit a doctor. The lead article in the most recent issue of Spine reports on the results of a randomized clinical trial which demonstrated that patients who received manual physical therapy and exercise had twice the improvement in symptoms compared to the current guideline group.

A recent investigative report published in the New York Times highlights the alarming increase in methadone prescriptions for the treatment of chronic spinal pain. The result has been a shocking increase in methadone-related deaths.

A recent study published in the British Medical Journal1 reports that spinal surgery for patients with sciatica offers a short term benefit, but by 6 months that benefit disappears and no difference is seen between patients who had surgery and those receiving physical therapy.

Health care expenditures for patients with spinal conditions are rising without an associated increase in health status, according to a February 2008 research report appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The American College of Physicians and the American Pain Society recommend doctors prescribe physical therapy when managing patients with low back pain.

ALEXANDRIA, VA, September 18, 2007 — For the nearly 100 million Americans who are overweight or obese, physical activity must be a crucial component to weight loss and better health, which is the focus of October’s National Physical Therapy Month, the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) announced today. According to a recent study conducted by [...]

Despite widespread use, the supplement chondroitin does not appear to help a majority of individuals with hip and knee pain caused by osteoarthritis. According to the April 17, 2007 edition of Annals of Internal Medicine Stephan Reichenbach, MD and associates in Switzerland and Germany discovered that while previous meta-analyses described moderate to large benefits of chondroitin in patients with osteoarthritis, recent large-scale trials did not find evidence to support that theory.