Jeff Langmaid tracks how chiropractors are treating low back pain differently: they're doing fewer spinal adjustments, less imaging, and fewer passive therapies like heat and ultrasound. The shift reflects changing professional guidelines and a move toward evidence-based practice.
The question that they asked was, are clinicians treating low back pain differently? And the answer is yes, but probably not in the ways that you'd expect. There are some approaches that have moved closer to some of the recommendations and some moved farther away. Some differences have narrowed and others have remained. So this is evolving, which I think is pretty cool because it showcases to us really what's going on. And quite often the answers to things aren't perfect. They're in constant evolutionary state. And this is one of those things. And perhaps most interesting for us, chiropractors became, I say, less likely to recommend, you know, passive therapies, advanced imaging, but they also became less likely to select spinal adjustments for a straightforward acute low back pain case. Also very interesting. So we're going to dive into this and much more because this is not just simply a story about healthcare getting quote unquote more evidence-based. This is really how professions evolve, ultimately how clinical identity changes, how guidelines, expectations, risk education, all of those things, you know, happen and come together in, your practice in the treatment room.
