Treatment of Acute Lower Back Pain

Abstract

Acute lower back by definition is self-limited, lasting less than 4 weeks. While acute lower back pain may last up to 4 weeks, in fact it often only lasts less than 1 or 2 weeks. Because of its short duration and relative benign nature, acute lower back pain has received much less attention in the medical literature than chronic lower back pain. There are two very good reasons for this. First, it is very difficult to study something that is only going to last four weeks at most. To measure the effectiveness of any particular intervention would require massive amounts of patients in a study in order to detect whether that intervention was effective. Second, because of its limited duration, testing and treatments are of limited value. Diagnostic testing is rarely performed [1]. Treatments are used to take away symptoms and ideally speed recovery, but invasive treatments tend to be avoided because, again, the pain is going to go away anyway [2].