New Treatment Guidelines for Chronic Low Back Pain

While some people with lower-back pain may doubt whether movement is the answer, new treatment guidelines from the American College of Physicians (ACP) recommend nondrug therapies as the first line of treatment to relieve acute and chronic lower-back pain.

For people with acute back pain, the new treatment guidelines recommend heat, acupuncture, massage, or spinal manipulation. Initial recommendations for chronic back pain include exercise, tai chi, yoga, progressive relaxation, and mindfulness-based stress reduction.

The report advocates that drug therapies should not be considered until after other nonpharmacological methods have been tried. The guidelines are available in the Annals of Internal Medicine (2017; doi:10.7326/M16-2367) and are public.