Assessing Chronic Back Pain

Pain... pain is definitely not a simple subject.  We see people in pain every day and need the knowledge to effectively address the complaint of pain.  I'm willing to bet the majority of patients seen in the outpatient setting have a complaint of low back pain.  Most of us here realize that drugs and surgery are inadequate in resolving back pain complaints.  Drugs and surgery are not without risks and side effects and failure rates (in the case of surgery).  Surgical risks and surgical failure rates aren't a secret; mentioning "unneccesary surgery" in a new study creates a positive spin on drugs.

Joachim Scholz has obviously spent some time studying pain.  It appears to me that Scholz has recognized the ineffectiveness of treatments directed toward pain due to the failure of the provider (and maybe even drug manufacturer) to consider pain mechanisms.  Scholz and colleagues recently published (April 9, 2009) a Standardized Evaluation of Pain (StEP) for the low back.  It's great to see work outside our field being done on classifying patients with low back pain according to pain characteristics.  It's great to see the type of pain being considered as an important factor for those with low back pain.

The downside is they are barking up the wrong tree.  I say this because of the funding for the study:  

"This study was supported by an unrestricted grant initially awarded by Pharmacia through The Academic Medicine and Managed Care Forum, with supplementary support from Pfizer. Some of the study authors have disclosed various financial relationships with Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Pharmacia, Elan, Allergan, Progenics, Alpharma, Janssen, Merck, Novartis, OrthoMcNeil, Union Chimique Belge, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Roche, Abbott, Endo, Hydra Biosciences, Taisho, Solace Pharmaceuticals, Ferrumax Pharmaceuticals, and PLoS Medicine. The General Hospital Corporation owns the copyright on StEP."

Maybe one day it will be common knowledge that a drug isn't the best option for chronic back pain.

~Selena