Research in Low Back Pain: Time to Stop Seeking the Elusive “Magic Bullet”

For physical therapists who practice in the area of low back pain (LBP) and pride themselves on being evidence-based practitioners, the period 1995 to 2005 would seem to be the decade of our dreams: In this issue of Physical Therapy , Koumantakis and colleagues contribute the results of yet another RCT, one that investigated the adjunct effect of trunk stabilization exercises when added to “general exercise” in people with recurrent LBP.Given all of this accumulating evidence, we might conclude that we should be better able to address some of the shortfalls that have plagued us over the years in our efforts to manage LBP in a cost-effective manner. Indeed, with such a wealth of new evidence, we might assume that clinicians should now be capable of integrating the best evidence with each individual clinical encounter to eventually arrive at an optimal level of practice proficiency. Instead, we are faced with real facts that do not bode well for such an outcome: