How to Make Safe & Effective Back Pain Treatment Decisions
A Strategy for Making Better Pain Treatment Solutions Choices
If you’re reading this, it’s likely you are experiencing some kind of spine or spine-related pain. Everyone who lives with chronic spine pain, regardless of its origin, knows what it’s like to choose the wrong doctor or select a pain treatment solution that didn’t work. Right? I sure have - over and over! You would think that after almost 20 years of back pain and looking for that “One” best treatment solution, I would be able to get it right for once. Well, I’m still looking! (Know what I mean, Jelly Bean?)
There are a couple of things I know for sure:
Everybody with a Spine will have some level of back-related pain over their lifetime.
Everybody with back pain will probably kiss a lot of frogs trying to find the right treatment solution to cure their pain - and get a few warts in the process! (Ribbit)
Making the right decisions about your healthcare is, in general, tricky, but when you are dealing with the spine and nervous system, the chances you’ll get it right the first time are slim at best. As they say, “Brother (or Sister), I feel your pain!” That’s why I devised a strategy and system for discovering, evaluating, and selecting the pain treatments that are most likely to succeed without causing you further pain and undue suffering. I call it the: “Fail Down – Fail-Over” Back Pain Treatment Strategy.
The strategy is based on a traffic light model. Red is for “Stop” and think, (high-risk), Yellow is for “Caution,” so “Go Slow” (moderate-risk), and Green is for “Go,” which means Start Here (low-risk solutions).
The best strategy for safely resolving your chronic back pain is always to try the most benign treatments first, and only progress to more risky treatments after each previous treatment has failed to provide the pain relief you were hoping for. This is the essence of the “Fail-Down / Fail-Over” back pain treatment strategy. You’re trying to ease your pain, but not to cause yourself more pain or even permanent damage to your body. It’s all about balancing Pain Relief vs. Side Effects, and Risk.
The idea behind this system is simple. Identify the most likely pain treatments and build a table with three columns like the image above. Follow the strategy by beginning with the “Start” column (green) and progressing down each risk column (fail-down), trying every low-risk treatment in turn until it fails or you have found blessed pain relief. If not, then move over and upward to the top of the “Next” risk column (yellow) (fail-up) and progress down again until you discover moderately effective pain relief. If after trying all those treatments and failing to find relief, fail-over and upwards to the “Last” column (red) of high-risk treatment options. Following this strategy will help ensure you don’t take excessive or unnecessary risks.
The previous table of treatments only includes a few generalized examples. Use it as a guide to creating your own “Fail-Down/Fail-Over Strategy” table using the treatment options you and your pain specialist or other medical providers consider to be the safest and most effective options available for your unique situation. Of course, there’s a difference between the treatments you think are best, and the solutions your doctor may determine are the right treatments for your particular health issues. It’s not always possible to choose your treatments in such an orderly manner, but by following this strategy, no matter which treatments you and your doctor ultimately decide on, at least you will have a simple method of evaluating your risks. The key point is to use a “systemized” approach to healthcare and avoid using a dart board.
(Note: The definition of risk categories and treatment examples shown in the previous table are subjective and only represent the author’s personal opinion. Always consider your doctor’s advice about the risk profile of their recommended treatments. You can read more about The Fail-Down, Fail-Over Strategy in my book “Back Surgery for Beginners.”)
Summary
When dealing with your remarkable and unbelievably complex spine and nervous system, you must take your decisions very seriously and make your healthcare treatment choices slowly and deliberately. The potential for negative consequences is just too high, and every day in this country and around the world, pain sufferers make serious errors in judgment that leave far too many disabled and in more pain than they began with. Please - don’t you be one of them!
The primary takeaways of this system are:
GO SLOW - Don’t allow your pain to make decisions for you!
AVOID RED (SURGERY) if at all possible!- Always evaluate all of your options and start with safer and lower-risk alternative pain treatment solutions first before deciding to undergo any surgery, regardless of how minimal it is said to be.
FOCUS ON RISK - When choosing which pain treatments to try, always try and avoid unnecessary risk by giving greater weight to risk than to other factors, including effectiveness, when making treatment decisions.
I hope this simple system will help you think about how you choose your pain relief treatments and solutions, so you’ll find the pain relief you so desperately desire, without any unintended consequences.
Please let me know what you think by clicking the “Comment” button.
Until the next Report,
All the Best, My Friend!
Franklin