Chiropractic Care Eases Back-Related Leg Pain

A study published on September 16, 2014, in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that spinal manipulation (SMT), as they called it, combined with exercise, could help patients with back and leg pain more than just exercise alone. This care is in contrast to medications, injections, or spinal surgery.

The study titled "Spinal Manipulation and Home Exercise With Advice for Subacute and Chronic Back-Related Leg Pain" listed the objective as, "To determine whether spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) plus home exercise and advice (HEA) compared with HEA alone reduces leg pain in the short and long term in adults with back-related leg pain (BRLP)."

The study followed 192 patients with short term or chronic back-related leg pain. They split these subjects into two groups. One group received only home exercise and advice recommendations, while the other group also got the recommendations along with chiropractic adjustments.

The study subjects received the care and exercise for only a 12-week period and were re-evaluated at 12 and 52 weeks to see what changes had occurred. The results showed that at the 12-week period, both groups showed improvement with their problems. However, the group that received the chiropractic, along with their advice and exercise, was statistically more improved than the group that only did the exercise.

When a follow-up was conducted at the 52-week mark, the improvement was not as clear, showing that when the care does not continue through the full course, the results may not be as lasting.

A Sept. 15, 2014, article in Medpage quoted lead author Gert Bronfort, DC, PhD, from Northwestern Health Sciences University in Bloomington, Minn., who said, "Prior to this study, SMT was considered a viable treatment option of what is known as 'uncomplicated low back pain,' which is low back pain without radiating pain to the leg." He continued, "This combination resulted in advantages in pain reduction, disability, global improvement, satisfaction, medication use and general physical health status after 12 weeks."

David Geier, MD, an orthopedic surgeon in Charleston, S.C., who was not involved with the study, was quoted in the MedPage Today article, "If we can find less invasive means to get relief and avoid surgery, that's always a good thing."