Study: Chiropractic Care May Lessen Drug Use
Dartmouth-Hitchcock primary care physician Dr. Louis Kazal, left, and D-H chiropractor Justin Goehl, second from left, step into the lobby of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Heater Road clinic for a news conference after meeting with David Mara, N.H. Gov. Chris Sununu’s advisor on addiction and behavioral health, second from right, in Lebanon, N.H., Tuesday, June 26, 2018. Kazal and Goehl were part of a study in collaboration with Southern California University Health Sciences that showed patients receiving chiropractic care for non-cancer related back pain were less likely to use prescription opioid pain killers. At right is Dr. Mark Stagnone, president of the N.H. Chiropractic Association, and third from right is Dr. James Whedon, lead author of the study. (Valley News – James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. Reprinted with permission.
Valley News Staff Writer
Lebanon — Researchers at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the Geisel School of Medicine are highlighting a study that found that New Hampshire patients who received chiropractic care for lower back pain are significantly less likely to fill a prescription for an opioid than patients who didn’t see a chiropractor.
As a result, the Dartmouth researchers, among others, are pushing for expanding insurance coverage for chiropractic care.
The findings, which were published earlier this year in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, further bolster guidelines from groups such as the American College of Physicians, which suggest that physicians should first treat patients suffering from lower back pain with therapies such as spinal manipulation, a common chiropractic treatment, before prescribing opioids.
Expanding access to such therapies — which are not always covered by health insurance — was the subject of a discussion some of the researchers had on Tuesday with David Mara, who serves as New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s adviser on addiction and behavioral health, at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Heater Road.
“I believe it’s all about access and if there are other options to pain medication it should be available to citizens of New Hampshire,” Mara said to reporters following the meeting.
He noted that some patients in New Hampshire have health insurance that covers chiropractic care, while others do not.
“We’re trying to do anything we can to stop more people from suffering from addiction,” Mara said.
Changing the way providers treat lower back pain has the potential to make a difference in overall opioid use, given that 59 percent of U.S. adults prescribed opioids reported having back pain, according to a 2008 study in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. (more…)
The United States is in the midst of the worst addiction epidemic in history and New Hampshire has become its poster child. The statistics are startling with nearly 64,000 lives lost to overdoses in 2016, a greater loss of life than the entire Vietnam War. As attention is focused on finding a solution to this crisis, the finger of blame has been pointed firmly in the direction of the pharmaceutical industry and a medical community encouraged for over a decade to generously prescribe some of the most addictive substances known to man. The CDC estimates that up to 80% of heroin addicts developed their addiction through the legitimate use of opioid medications.