Chronic nonspecific back pain

Chronic nonspecific back pain is a common problem, and a sore back is one of the most common reasons that people in the United States seek medical treatment. However, just how common is difficult to say.

Describing back pain a challenge
Part of the challenge in precisely describing the scope of back pain is that most people who go to the doctor complaining of back pain have few or no objective physical findings. Instead, doctors rely on people's description of pain, on their perception of their limitations, and on their recall of how often they have experienced pain and to what degree. And, you and everyone else differ in how you perceive pain and in your response to it.

Additionally, when there are physical findings such as from a bulging or herniated disk, its existence may have little to do with pain. Bulging disks are a common cause of back pain for people older than 50, but some people with bulging disks have back pain and many others don't. To complicate matters, some people with no signs of age-related physical degeneration on X-rays may have back pain. In other words, two people with apparently the same degree of — or lack of — physical degeneration may have totally different experiences with back pain.

All of this makes classifying back pain and its prevalence difficult.

A common complaint
Research indicates that in 2003, Americans with back symptoms made about 4.8 million visits to hospital outpatient departments or to hospital emergency departments. A 2004 study showed that about 7.4 million American adults made health care visits (to a hospital and other settings) for nonspecific back pain. Other studies have shown that the prevalence of low back pain is between 15 and 20 of every 100 American adults.

As troubling as back pain can be, it is a common fact of life. For most people, and for most of the time, improvement in chronic back pain occurs with self-care means or with conservative treatment. For most people with chronic low back pain, symptoms wax and wane over time, and they have strategies for dealing with them. See your doctor when your usual strategies for dealing with pain are no longer effective and the pain is worsening — particularly if the pain is affecting your work life or your life outside of work.