Back Pain Treatment and Therapy
In most cases pain in low back improves over several weeks of treatment and home therapy. Some people find their back pain cure in simple over-the-counter drugs, others stay in bed. While resting for a couple of hours is good, staying in bed for days will do nothing but harm to your condition. If you are not able to relieve back pain using your own recourses, consider consulting a doctor and asking for advice.
Drugs used to relieve back pain
The most common thing you will be prescribed is an NSAID drug, which contains no steroids. In other cases the patient may be recommended to take a muscle relaxant to treat mild pain that doesn’t go away when over-the- counter painkillers are taken. Narcotic substances (codeine or hydrocodone) require close supervision of the doctor and can be prescribed for only a short period of time only.
Another group of medications used for back pain treatment includes antidepressants. These can be prescribed in low dosages and are likely to relieve back pain without any serious side effects (amitriptyline).
Back pain therapy and exercise
Your physical therapist can recommend the following kinds of back pain treatment: heat and ice application, ultrasound, muscle-release techniques and electrical stimulation. Back pain therapy may also include (when your condition improves a bit) specially designed exercise to improve your flexibility and strengthen the muscles. It can also increase your posture. Practicing these techniques regularly will help you make sure the pain will not come back.
Injections to cure back pain
If medications do not seem to work in your case and the pain radiates down the leg, another kind of treatment for back pain can be used: injections of intravenous medications known to reduce inflammation. For instance, an injection of cortisone reduces the inflammation around the roots of the nerves; its effects, however, are relatively short – for six weeks at the most.
Some patients may require an injection of numbing medication, which will temporarily block the sources of their pain. The botulism toxin (Botox) has been reported to relieve back pain by paralyzing strained muscles. The effects of these injections go away after three to four months.
Back pain surgery
The cases when surgery is used as treatment for back pain are rare. Surgery can be used when the pain is caused by a herniated disk. Nerve compression resulting in progressive muscle weakness or unrelenting pain can be also cured by such a surgery. There are several types of back pain surgery:
-Fusion. In this kind of surgery two vertebrae are joined to prevent them from moving and causing pain. The next step is insertion of a bone graft between the vertebrae. The main shortcoming of this method is the increased chance of developing arthritis in the adjoining vertebra.
-Partial removal of a vertebra. Some patients develop bony growths on their spines. These growths can compress some nerves and inflict pain. In this case the passage needs to be opened, which is done by removing a part of the vertebra.
-Partial removal of disk. If the material of the disk is pinching the nerve, one part of it can be removed to free the nerve and eliminate the pain.
-Disk replacement. This is a common alternative to the previous kind of back pain surgery involving the insertion of an artificial dick between two vertebrae.
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