Back and Neck Pain
Common but treatable. Back pain is so common that 80% of the population will experience it at one time or another. Despite this it remains an area of medicine surrounded by myth and common misperceptions. Most back pain can be managed at work with simple but effective interventions.
Back pain due to pathological reasons needs to be discounted. Our Medical Director trained in surgery before becoming an occupational physician, including posts in Orthopaedics & Trauma and a post in spinal surgery. Therefore, we’re unlikely to miss the more sinister, although rarer causes of back pain due to a tumour for instance.
However, most back pain is mechanical, and although it can be debilitating, especially in its acute phase, it can be effectively treated. In fact early treatment is the key to complete recovery. Statistics clearly show that the longer one remains off work with back pain the more unlikely it is that one will ever return to work.
We believe in quick evidence based interventions that have been shown to work. Most of these are simple and inexpensive. Seldom is there a need for expensive CT or MRI scans or prolonged physiotherapy. In most cases we aim to get the employee back to work within a week after the acute phase, where their recovery can continue in the form of vocational rehabilitation.
