Back Pain – diagnosis and treatment
Back pain is so unpredictable that it can show up for bending over to pick up a pen. The good thing is, most of the times, back pain doesn’t last long, and it goes away within the short term. But, if it lasts longer than three months, it should be diagnosed and treated by a professional physician. Back pain that lasts more than three months is considered as chronic back pain which we cannot overlook at any cost. There are many Home health products online that can help you to reduce your back; however, visiting a professional physician is must for you to diagnose and treat the disease.
Diagnosis
There is a range of assessments that help doctors to diagnose the pain. These assessments enable a doctor to determine what is the actual reason behind your pain. Some of the essential assessments may include:
- X-ray: This assessment comes out with an image with the alignment of your bones. It helps the doctor to determine whether you have broken bones or arthritis. But it alone isn’t enough to make sure if you have issues with your muscles, disks, spinal cords, or nerves.
- CT scans or MRI: If you have herniated disks or abnormality in nerves, bones, ligaments, muscles, blood vessels, and tissue, this assessment will come in handy for you.
- Blood tests: Blood tests can reveal if you have an infection or any other problem that can be the reason behind your back pain.
- Bone scan: This assessment is done very rarely by physicians. However, it can reveal if you have bone tumours or any other compression fractures that take place due to osteoporosis.
Treatment
Physicians usually become able to diagnose and cure back pain within a few weeks. However, all the cases are not the same for everyone. And it becomes very complicated when it comes to back pain. Some people may let go of the pain within a few weeks, but some others have to deal with it for months after months.
Most of the times, heat therapy might be the only way to get you relieved from the back pain. In this case, you should stay away from bed rest.
In such a situation, you should only conduct the activities that you can tolerate. Keep continuing your daily activities. Don’t stay in touch with activities that cause you pain. On the off chance, when the pain doesn’t go away after taking home remedies for a few weeks, you must see a doctor immediately. Doctors might make you go through some medications such as:
- Over-the-counter pain relievers: There so many anti-inflammatory drugs that set you free from the back pain. Doctors might prescribe you such drugs, varying on the type of your pain.
- Muscle relaxants: When the OTC pain relievers fail to relieve your back pain, the doctors then prescribe you muscle relaxants. These relaxants can make you feel sleepy or dizzy.
- Narcotics: Doctors may also use drugs that contain opioids for a short time to treat back pain.
- Antidepressants: Antidepressants are also useful for relieving back pain.
- Injections: Your doctor may use injections if other medications don’t become able to reduce the pain.
There are times when patients need to go through surgery to let go of their back pain, but that is an infrequent case. However, these are the optimal ways that can diagnose and treat your back pain in the first hand.