More people are choosing to visit a chiropractor first for back pain. While the research shows that seeing a chiropractor first for lower back pain results in fewer procedures, fewer tests and improved outcomes in a shorter period of time, while avoiding chronicity.

In my experience as a practicing chiropractor for almost 40 years, patients who visit medical providers for lower back pain first see more providers, are more likely to have a reaction to a medication and over time become more chronic because the root problem was never addressed.

Chiropractors understand that lower back pain is a movement problem but what is causing that movement problem will vary greatly from patient to patient. The one size fits all approach of giving pain medication has been debunked by the Annals of Internal Medicine who offered guidelines on what works for back pain in 2017.

Most research suggests seeing a chiropractor first for most painful conditions results in lower costs and better results. Here is some of that research.

A recent research based article was written in the chiropractic magazine, Dynamic Chiropractic.

All the Ways DCs Top MDs for Spinal Pain

New Review Compares Downstream Utilization and Cost Differences

Editorial Staff

A new systematic review compares the cost of caring for patients with spine-related pain, examining the difference in downstream costs between chiropractic care and medical management.¹

The authors conducted a Medline search, initially finding 2,256 citations from which they identified 44 applicable studies of high or acceptable quality. The 44 studies include 26 cohort studies, 17 cost studies and one randomized, controlled trial.

This is the first such study conducted since a similar paper was published in 2015.² This is important, as most of the papers published since then identified not only initial costs of care, but downstream costs as well, which can be even more expensive than the initial care.