Kids & “Unspecific Back Pain”

The journal of Children reports on new guidelines for a pervasive health concern. With a monthly prevalence of 20% in young kids, potentially leading to a lifetime prevalence of 40%, back pain is serious. The guideline, developed by 14 professional societies in Germany, is based on a literature search of over 140 studies of nonspecific back pain.

Recommendations include:

• Active physical therapy
• Home exercises
• Cognitive behavioral therapy
• Intensified interdisciplinary multimodal pain treatment
• Education

Recommendations advise against:

• Pharmacologic treatment
• Invasive treatment

The journal article concludes, “This guideline’s comprehensive approach and inclusion of specific back pain in diagnostics resulted in a large number of studies that required extensive screening and processing. Future updates of this guideline will be less time-consuming as they will be able to focus on individual sections instead of all historical literature. Future research on non-specific back pain in childhood and adolescence is strongly needed.”

 

Read the journal article.

Other Categories:

• back pain

• chronic pain

• guidelines

• interdisciplinary pain management

• multimodal pain management

• pediatric pain management

• pediatrics