Watch Your Back!-- How the Back Pain Industry Is Costing Us More and Giving Us Less by Dr. Deyo

Over the past twenty years, treatment of back pain has become ever more expensive and intensive. Use of MRI scans, narcotic painkillers, injections, and invasive spine surgery have all grown by several hundred percent, yet annual surveys of people with back pain report steadily worse impairments.  Though it may seem counterintuitive, fewer medical interventions may produce better results with back pain. Expecting a probe, a pill, or a procedure to cure is usually unrealistic, yet entire industries promote the notion that someone else will "fix" you. Watch Your Back! exposes these flaws in the current approach to back pain, along with the profit motives and conflicts of interest behind many of them. Richard A. Deyo, MD, proposes an approach to managing back pain that empowers the individual and leads more directly to effective care.