ArthritisDigest2013
Massage helps neck pain but only if the ‘dose’ is high enough
Massage is often used to help neck pain but little research has been carried out about how much massage makes a difference.
So a team from Seattle split 228 people with chronic neck pain into five different groups, which received various doses of massage for a five-week period. The results showed that the benefits of massage treatments for chronic neck pain increase with dose. Continue reading
Hips ops for people in their 90s have similar outcomes to those in younger people
Total hip replacement operations in people in their 90s have comparable outcomes to when younger people have the surgery, says an orthopaedic surgeon from the US, Dr Alexander Miric.
The results of hip replacement surgery in 183 people who were aged at least 90 years were compared to the results of more than 43,000 other total hip replacement surgeries performed on younger people aged younger than 80 years and 80–89 years over a 10-year period. They compared length of the hospital stay, complications after surgery, death rates and readmissions to the hospital up to 90 days after the surgery. Continue reading
Bedtime back pain preventing a good night’s sleep for almost half of Brits
The link between back pain experienced at night and beds is being overlooked, says research from the British Chiropractic Association and Sealy (the world’s biggest bed company), even though neck or back pain has prevented nearly half of people from sleeping.
Despite 43% of 2,000 people surveyed saying that sleeping can cause them to suffer from neck or back pain, 61% do not think that their sleeping position is important for their back or neck health. Continue reading
Surgery in lower back pain: good results
Minimally invasive surgery could benefit for people with lower back pain, says US research published in Spine.
Over 300 people were tracked over seven years so that experts could establish if transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) is of longer-term benefit.
The procedure sees the anterior and posterior columns of the spine fused using a bone graft and interbody spacer to offer greater internal stability. Continue reading
Epidural steroid injections for back pain may not be superior
An injection for lower back pain (transforaminal epidural steroid injections), which is widely seen as being superior to interlaminar injections, may not actually deliver significantly superior results in terms of pain relief or functional improvement, says a review of trials presented at the American Academy of Pain Medicine 30th Annual Meeting.
“I think these findings are definitely controversial, but I have had numerous people say to me that this is in fact very consistent with their experience using these two modalities,” says lead author Dr George Chang Chien. Continue reading
