Physical Therapists Treating Older Adults who have Low Back Pain

The population of people 65 and older continues to grow.  This particular population does have chronic health conditions as noted in "indicator 16."  They also have significant functional limitations as outlined in "indicator 37."  It also appears that the occurrence of severe back pain increases with increasing age.

Are physical therapists ready to manage osteoporosis?  Medscape has a nice CME addressing nonpharmacologic management of osteoporosis.

Are physical therapists ready to manage osteoporotic compression fractures?  Are they ready to treat successful or even unsuccessful percutaneous vertebroplasty?  (FYI percutaneous vertrebroplasy has a high failure rate and a high incidence of future adjacent vertebral compression fracture.)  Not to knock the procedure, but maybe this high amount of failure is due to lack of really determining appropriate candidates for vertebroplasty?

What about bracing?  Is it appropriate or not appropriate for vertebral compression fractures? for osteoporosis?

And then... spinal stenosis readily enters the picture for people within this population.  The question of surgery or no surgery enters into the picture.

If this topic is of interest to you, you will be excited to learn a session titled, "Treating Low Back Pain in Older Adults - Special Understanding of Epidemiology, Bone Related Changes and Function Can Lead to an Improved Lifestyle" is scheduled on February 19 from 8-11 am by Gregory Hicks, PT, Tara Manal, PT, Megan Sions, PT and Tenette Velasco, PT during the American Physical Therapy Association Combined Sections Meeting.

photo by Richard Carter via Flickr

~Selena