Trusting your back pain - with the professionals

In November 2007 the 6th Interdisciplinary World Congress on Low Back and Pelvic Pain was held in Barcelona, Spain. Surgeons, physiotherapists, osteopaths and chiropractors from all over the world meet in a different country, every three years. Jo Keers our local North Coast physiotherapist and Clinical Pilates instructor joined them again this conference. “It was exciting to again be with other passionate practitioners, the cross-pollination of ideas and discoveries both fascinating and progressive.”

The world series of lower back pain was first conceived in 1991, its goal being “to promote and facilitate interdisciplinary knowledge and to help to create consensus on prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of acute and chronic lumbopelvic pain”.

“The last 20 years has seen a significant increase in our scientific knowledge and understanding of low back and pelvic pain. It was at the first World Congress in 1992, that we discovered that most of what we knew was purely through trial and error within our own clinics. Many questions needed answering, through rigorous scientific research.” (Jo Keers)

For example:
If someone presented with an initial acute low back injury - why would this then go onto develop into a chronic condition, rather than healing within 6-8 weeks, like most areas of the body?

And -

We could see patterns that certain postural types were more prone to certain back and pelvic pain conditions, but why was this so?

We can now assess clients more effectively using scientifically validated assessments and then go onto treat them more effectively because of our increased knowledge. One of the most significant findings to date has been that ‘exercise based therapy’ is THE most effective therapy for chronic back pain.

Jo Keers is a physiotherapist with more than 20 years experience in the management of back pain. She has a post graduate qualification in Manipulative Physiotherapy and was a lecturer at Sydney University in the management of Musculoskeletal Disorders. For the past 12 years Jo has worked exclusively in the area of exercise rehabilitation for back and neck pain, owning clinics in Sydney and rural NSW.

“As someone who now specializes in exercise based therapy, the most exciting thing is that we can now assess our clients using validated assessment tools and understand what they need, quite often without hands-on therapy.” affirms Jo. “In fact it can quite often be a few simple targeted exercises performed daily that can not only relieve the pain but prevent it recurring in the future.”