How Long Will My Neck Keep Hurting Me?!?

When patients enter my office, I know that this question is probably the first that they'd like to ask me.  

I've mentioned in my last post that patient compliance is probably the most important factor in a patient getting better or not and how long it will take.  Invariably, I can help improve the patient's neck, face and headache issues right away- unless they fail to follow my advise and go right back to the activities that caused it in the first place. Or if the patient doesn't ever show up for treatment- improving their condition becomes much more difficult. Patients have to demonstrate that getting better is actually a priority.

For this to occur, as you can imagine, the patient needs to be sufficiently motivated to get better.  I saw this recently on Medbridge with statistics gathered by physical therapist Louie Puentedura.  I think this effectively helps in understanding the possible repercussions if one does ignore their neck pain. 

So two things that I find very interesting about these statistics...

1.  44% of patients with neck pain will develop chronic symptoms.

W0w.  So if you have neck pain, almost half of you will develop chronic symptoms!  Now as most of you know who've seen me, neck pain doesn't have to be chronic.  Neck pain really just requires some patient education and compliance to improve significantly.  In the last 4 years in my office, I can really only think of one neck problem that required further medical intervention beyond therapy.  That's 1 our of...  a lot.  

The key is to not ignore the signs- chronic discomfort or pain, limited neck motion and difficulty or increased pain with daily activities.

2.  50-85% experience recurrence of their neck pain within 1-5 years.  

This is interesting because I see it so often.  People take medications and their neck pain calms down for awhile.  But they fail to ever address the cause of their neck problems.  If they don't seek someone like myself, these neck issues are proven to persist and actually worsen over time.  Why?  Because the cause of the problem is still there.

So if the motivation to address your neck issues is lacking, these statistics might be just the kick in the pants you need! 

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