Back Pain and Medical Imaging: Is it Really Necessary?

The dangers of medicalizing a global problem

Have you ever been awoken by sharp, stabbing, low-back pain in the middle of the night? Has serious back pain prevented you from going to work or even standing upright? Back-pain will affect 80% of the general population at least once in their lifetime¹. Indeed, back-pain is the number one cause disability in the world ². The costs associated with low-back pain include decreased productivity, increased dependence on compensation and increased psychosocial burden³. The recurrence rate of back pain is very high. Within one year of diagnosis, there is up to a 70% likelihood that a person will re-aggravate it and an 85% probability that they will re-aggravate it in a lifetime⁴. Furthermore, the incidence of chronic back has more than doubled in major Western countries⁵. Evidently, the prevalence of back pain and its staggering costs underscore a failure in modern health care systems.