Early Physical Therapy for Acute Low Back Pain May Not Reduce Health Services Utilization, Costs, and Opioid Use

We read with interest the article published by Arnold et  al1 examining the effect of timing of physical therapy (PT) for acute low back pain on health services utilization (HSU). Reducing overuse of imaging, opioids, injections, and surgery for low back pain is an international priority.2 That early access to PT could replace or reduce many of these ser vices is not an unreasonable proposition, and one that is worthy of rigorous scientific investigation. However, we feel that by emphasizing observational studies over randomized controlled trials in their synthesis of available literature, the authors have, in this case, taken an approach that was s uboptimal.

Source: Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation - June 25, 2019 Category: Rehabilitation Authors: Giovanni Ferreira, Hugo Amorim, Chris Maher Tags: Departments Source Type: research