Many people have some fundamental misunderstandings about back pain treatment options.  Today we’ll discuss some of the more common misconceptions and explain how these treatments really work.

Epidural Injections:

Many people are under the mistaken impression that epidural injections suck fluid out of bulging discs to reduce pressure on spinal nerves.  In fact, epidural injections place steroids around the area of the bulging disc in order to inhibit the inflammatory response.  They do reduce swelling and pressure, much like an ice pack works on a swollen area, but they do not suck anything out of the disc.

Physical Therapy:

Many people think that the exercises physical therapists do are strengthening the spinal discs.  Discs are made of fibrocartilage, not muscle, so you can’t really strengthen them per se.  Exercises can be used to improve spinal posture and muscular support, which can reduce the stress on discs, but it doesn’t make them stronger. 

The other big misconception about physical therapy is that once you are released from care, you are “cured”.  Any benefits you gain from physical therapy are quickly lost if you do not continue your exercises after you are released from treatment.  For this reason, we favor a “low-tech” approach rather than using expensive exercise machines in our rehabilitation programs.  We want people to be able to continue their exercises long-term on their own, and that is difficult to do if they’ve only learned what to do on expensive machines they don’t have convenient access to.

Surgery:

Probably the biggest misconception about surgery is the idea that it takes care of disc problems “once and for all”.  This is far from being the case.  Surgery has a long-term success rate of only about 50% in the treatment of spinal discs, and it rarely eliminates back pain completely in the long-run.  In many cases, surgery produces scar tissue and/or changes in spinal biomechanics that eventually create new pain problems.

Furthermore, most patients who have back surgery must strictly limit their activities and most are unable to return to any type of heavy exertion or activities that place a lot of pressure and/or torque on the lower spine.  Many back surgery recipients are very disappointed with what they are safely able to do after surgery, even if it does relieve their pain.

Spinal Decompression:

The most common misconception about spinal decompression is that it is the same as traction and that all spinal decompression systems are the same.  True spinal decompression systems like the DRX9000 that we use are sophisticated machines that use computers to control the treatment.  Regular tractions systems simply pull on the spine at pre-set rates and force.  The effects of regular traction are limited by the body’s natural muscle guarding response that contracts the muscles around the spine and fights the decompressive effects on the discs.  True spinal decompression systems like ours use computer-controlled motors that lull the muscles into a relaxed state so that the vast majority of the force is actually applied to reducing disc pressure. 

The difference is dramatic. Regular traction devices have little effect on disc bulging, and patients tend to find the pull from the machines to be somewhat uncomfortable.  By contrast, spinal decompression has been documented to reduce or eliminated disc bulging, and most patients find the treatments to be very comfortable and relaxing. 

Hopefully you have found this review of the misconceptions about back pain treatments to be informative and helpful.