As sports medicine and back pain expert Dr. Sean Wheeler will soon reveal in his new book UPRISE, existing medical science for the treatment of chronic back pain has reached a fork in the road.
A Who’s Who of experts in spinal problems and back pain, led in consultation with Sam W. Wiesel, MD, agree, as discussed in Is Creativity in Back Pain Research in Short Supply? Is Genius Extinct?, appearing in The Back Letter, a monthly newsletter published for healthcare professionals, leading with this:
That the back pain field is in crisis is beyond dispute.
The back pain field…is a poster child for ineffective medical care and wasteful services…
The report continues, making a point we discuss on this page:
The recent Global Burden of Disease Study, published 2012 in The Lancet [and updated this past week] concluded provocatively that back pain is the single most disabling “disease” worldwide.
Some believe the primary problem in the back pain field is a lack of original thinking among researchers and healthcare providers.
Said Aage Indahl, MD, at the International Back Pain Forum XI hosted in Melbourne, Australia—and repeated several times since:
“We have been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. We have nothing to show for it.”
Indahl suggests the field is no closer to resolving the back pain crisis than it was four decades ago…[given] a lack of novel and creative thinking in the back pain field that might lead to scientific breakthroughs…
He notes…novel ideas are much more likely to lead to breakthroughs than refining and distilling the research to date. “Let’s get crazy,” Indahl proposes. “We need crazy ideas.”
Challenging the status quo in back pain medicine is sorely needed.
Dr. Sean Wheeler will have much to say about how to achieve back pain liberation – challenging the status quo of back pain medicine – in his new book UPRISE, coming in early 2015.
