An exciting new study presented at the European Chiropractors’ Union (ECU) convention in Cyprus earlier this year underscores the advantages of regular chiropractic care. The authors, whose paper won first prize in the research competition at the ECU event, looked at how chiropractic maintenance care (MC) could prevent new episodes of nonspecific low back pain or minimize its impact. According to the authors, the purpose of their study was to “investigate the effect of maintaining care as compared to symptomatic treatment on reducing recurrent and persistent LBP.”

The multi-center, randomized clinical trial was conducted in Sweden, with patients provided with either treatment at regular intervals regardless of symptoms (MC), or for symptomatic treatment whereby patients were treated only when consulting for pain. The MC group was provided with chiropractic care at one to three-month intervals.

It is an altogether familiar scenario, in that most patients only go for chiropractic care only when something is bothering them. Unfortunately, by the time a patient recognizes their pain, it may be a few days before they can get in to see their DC to address it. If only they could/would visit their DC periodically, regardless of symptoms,  study results show that:

“The MC group consisted of 163 subjects who reported 19.3  fewer days with bothersome LBP over the 12 month follow-up compared to the 154 subjects in the control group. The MC group had an average of 7 visits during the study, compared to 5 visits in the control group.”

So, here’s the math for the average patient: Two extra visits to your office each year can result in almost 20 more days without back pain. For a patient with a $30 dollar copay that comes down to paying about $3 dollars a day for those 20 extra back pain free days. Sounds like a good value to me…

Update: Some of the Authors of this study recently conducted another study similar to this that backed up these findings! Check it out here: The Effectiveness of Chiropractic Maintenance Care

Check out our other blog post regarding The Importance of Maintaining Chiropractic Care

Source:

Prevention of low back pain: effect, cost-effectiveness, and cost-utility of maintenance care – study protocol for a randomized clinical trial.