Guideline: Prioritize non-drug therapies for low back pain

Clinicians and patients should prioritize non-pharmacologic therapies for low back pain of any duration, according to an updated guideline from the American College of Physicians.

For acute and subacute low back pain, first-line choices include heat, massage, acupuncture, and spinal manipulation, it was written in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Patients with chronic low back pain have many nondrug options, ranging from exercise and tai chi to mindfulness-based stress reduction and spinal manipulation, the authors add.

Low back pain cost the United States $100 billion in 2006 alone, according to the guideline authors. To update the therapeutic recommendations of the 2007 version of this guideline, they searched Ovid Medline, reference lists, and the Cochrane databases of controlled trials and systematic reviews. Non-pharmacologic trials ranged from two studies of tai chi to 121 studies of exercise, the reviewers noted in a separate publication. Studies of pharmacologic therapies ranged from 9 trials of benzodiazepines to 70 trials of NSAIDs.

The updated therapeutic recommendations focus on clinical presentations. They define acute low back pain as lasting less than four weeks, sub-acute low back pain as lasting 4-12 weeks, and chronic low back pain as lasting more than 12 weeks. For acute and subacute low back pain, low to moderate quality evidence supports the efficacy of acupuncture, massage, spinal manipulation, superficial heat, lumbar supports, and low-level laser therapy, the guideline authors conclude.

They recommend considering nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or skeletal muscle relaxants for patients who want medications for acute or subacute low back pain. There is moderate-quality evidence that NSAIDs confer a small analgesic benefit, compared with placebo, but their renal and gastrointestinal risks call for careful patient selection and use of the lowest possible doses and treatment durations, the authors emphasized.

Likewise, moderate-quality evidence supports the use of skeletal muscle relaxants for short-term pain relief, but patients should know that these drugs can lead to sedation and other adverse effects on the central nervous system, they stated.

Acetaminophen is no longer recommended for low back pain, having failed to shorten time to recovery, compared with placebo, in a large, multicenter, randomized trial.

Likewise, short-term  oral or intramuscular corticosteroids have been found ineffective for acute  low back pain, while benzodiazepines are ineffective for radiculopathy, the experts noted.

“Evidence was insufficient to determine effectiveness of antidepressants, benzodiazepines, antiseizure medications, opioids, versus placebo, in patients with acute or subacute low back pain,” they added.

The guideline authors also noted insufficient evidence for many nondrug therapies for acute and subacute low back pain, including transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, electrical muscle stimulation, short-wave diathermy, traction, superficial cold, motor control exercise, Pilates, tai chi, yoga, psychological therapies, multidisciplinary rehabilitation, ultrasound, and taping.

For chronic low back pain, the guideline strongly recommends starting with nondrug therapies, including exercise, multidisciplinary rehabilitation, acupuncture, mindfulness-based stress reduction, tai-chi, yoga, motor control exercise, progressive relaxation, electromyography biofeedback, low-level laser therapy, operant therapy, cognitive-behavioral, or spinal manipulation.

Despite low-quality evidence for these modalities, “fewer harms are associated with these types of therapies than with pharmacologic options,” the authors wrote.

If nonpharmacologic interventions fail to improve chronic low back pain, the experts recommended NSAIDs in the first line, followed by second-line therapy with tramadol or duloxetine (Cymbalta). Recent evidence suggests that NSAIDs are less effective for low back pain than previously thought, while the trials that reported a modest analgesic benefit of duloxetine over placebo were industry funded, the authors note.

Opioids should be considered only for chronic low back pain that fails both nondrug and nonopioid therapies,” and only if the potential benefits outweigh the risks for individual patients, and after a discussion of known risks and realistic benefits,” the guideline authors emphasized.

This update does not cover topical therapies or epidural injections. Epidural steroid injections decreased pain associated with radiculopathy in the short term but did not confer long-term benefits, according to a recent separate review.