Physical Therapy Could Be a Good Alternative To Opioids For Treating Pain

Do you have pain in your neck, back, and shoulder? If so, then going to the physical therapist early, i.e. closer to the time of diagnosis can help. This can even decrease the need of the patient to be dependent on opioids.

Are you sick of taking medications for your neck, back and shoulder pain? If so, then visiting a physical therapist early, i.e. closer to the time of diagnosis can help.

This can reduce the consumption of opioids that can lead to their abuse as well as other health complications, suggests a study.

Early Physical Therapy Reduces Risk of Opioid Use
For patients with shoulder, back or knee pain who did use opioids, early physical therapy was associated with a 5 to 10 percent reduction in how much of the drug they used, the study found.

‘In the study, they found that, if a patient sought out physical therapy within the first 90 days of their diagnosis, he or she, on average, was less likely to fill an opioid prescription three months to a year later of being diagnosed.’

According to researchers from Stanford University in the US, physical therapy can be a useful, non-pharmacologic approach for managing severe musculoskeletal pain.

The study found that patients who had undergone early physical therapy used 10.3 percent less opioid medication for knee pain; 9.7 percent less for shoulder pain, and 5.1 percent less for back pain in the period three months to a year after their diagnosis.

"This is not a world where there are magic bullets. But many guidelines suggest that physical therapy is an important component of pain management, and there is little downside to trying it," said Eric Sun, Assistant Professor at the varsity.

Physical Therapy Reduces Emergency Department Visits For Fall Injuries
Physical therapy services reduce emergency department (ED) visit for fall. The ED visit rate for falls among older American adults has increased.

"What our study found was that if you can get these patients on physical therapy reasonably quickly, that reduces the probability that they will be using opioids in the longer term," said Sun.

For the study, researchers included 88,985 patients.

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Teens With Concussion Benefit the Most from Early Physical Therapy
Teens with concussion may benefit the most from earlier physical therapy, finds a study that investigated the safety and outcomes of multimodal impairment-based physical therapy at varying time points after injury in youth diagnosed with concussion.

Findings, published in the JAMA Network Open, showed that if a patient sought out physical therapy within the first 90 days of their diagnosis, he or she, on average, was less likely to fill an opioid prescription three months to a year after being diagnosed.

The results could be helpful to clinicians in search of pain-management options that carry fewer health risks than opioids, reduces pain and improves function for some musculoskeletal conditions, Sun noted.