Dr. Stefano Sinicropi, M.D.

If you’re hoping to leave the emergency department with prescription opioids to combat your low back pain, you’re likely to be disappointed. That’s because the number of prescriptions issued by emergency room physicians for low back pain has dropped nearly 50 percent compared to just a few years ago.

To get a better understanding of how emergency departments are working to help patients treat low back pain, researchers explored the rate of ER opioid prescriptions for back pain between 2016 and 2022, reviewing nearly 53 million ER visits for back pain. Back in 2016, nearly one-third of patients who presented to the emergency department for low back pain left with a prescription for opioid painkillers (32%). However, that number has dropped significantly over the past six years, reducing to 19%.

“The decline in opioid prescribing shows physicians are responding to evidence and changing their practice at a time of growing awareness of the opioid epidemic,” said study lead researcher Dr. Howard Kim, an emergency physician at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, in a news release.

Encouraging Findings

While it may seem like the results suggest that many patients are not getting the care they seek at emergency departments, it’s certainly possible that the opposite is true. Opioid painkillers only mask the symptoms, and while that can help in the short-term, they do little to address the root cause of discomfort, making them an unreliable long-term treatment option. We oftentimes advocate for active interventions, like exercise, physical therapy, stretching techniques, posture improvements and weight loss, as these treatments are more likely to strengthen the spine or stabilize supportive structures. These interventions tend to yield much better long-term treatment results, and it appears that more emergency room physicians may be following this same line of thought.

The results are encouraging because doctors are really working to provide long-term treatment programs even though their patients are in a fair amount of discomfort. The study suggests that when presenting to the emergency room, a study patient’s average pain rating was a seven out of 10. That’s a pretty significant pain score, and while we’d never want a patient to feel like they left the care facility without answers or a plan to manage their pain, this study seems to suggest that doctors are providing a higher level of personalized care when patients present to the emergency room with low back pain. Instead of just rushing them out of the ER with a proverbial band-aid for their problem, doctors are digging in and helping patients find a more individualized treatment program that can help them find long-term relief.

The emergency room can be a hectic place, but doctors still owe their patients the highest level of care, and that means taking the time to get to know them and providing a treatment plan that gives them the best chance at a great long-term outcome. Many do that every day, but it appears that more have started doing that in the last decade, which is wonderful to see.

If you want to connect with a specialist who will give you the time you deserve and work to provide the right type of care plan, reach out to Dr. Sinicropi and the team at The Midwest Spine & Brain Institute today at (651) 430-3800.

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