Jeff Langmaid breaks down a systematic review on how well doctors actually follow low back pain guidelines. The research shows a major gap between when guidelines are published and when clinics adopt them, especially for back pain treatment.
The study I'll be highlighting is titled Effectiveness of Strategies for Implementing Guideline Concordant Care in Low Back Pain A Systematic Review and Meta Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. I'll drop a link down in the show notes. We'll move through the study pretty quickly. They basically highlight the fact, as we know, that clinical practice guidelines are really important resources to do a couple things. One, to improve the quality of care for low back pain in this case. And how do they do that? Well, they do that by saying synthesizing the available evidence and providing recommendations for best practices. And they highlight what we also know to be true, which is, hey, there's a time lag. Just because something is produced, meaning published today, doesn't mean it's implemented tomorrow. And that gap of time I think can be expected. I don't know what the average is, but I know specifically relative to low back pain care, this lag has been way too long and they're highlighting that in this study as well.
