International Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
Open Access
ISSN: 2329-9096
+44 1300 500008
ISSN: 2329-9096
+44 1300 500008
Panagiotis Zogopoulos, Panagiotis Kokkalis, Georgios Tsanis, Ioannis Ydraios and Aggelos Leventis
Posters-Accepted Abstracts: Int J Phys Med Rehabil
Low back pain is a common musculoskeletal disorder defined as pain, muscle tension or stiffness in the lumbosacral area of the spine. It results in high health costs and incapacity to work causing a significant socio-economic burden. The optimal management of non-specific chronic low back pain has yet to be determined. Recently, acupuncture for chronic low back pain in addition to routine care is receiving increased recognition and acceptance by both patients and physicians. Clinicians treating patients with chronic low back pain with acupuncture may elicit an immediate sense of calmness with subsequent well-being benefits for their patients. Apart from its analgesic effect acupuncture has been also shown to inexpensively improve functional outcome and quality of life and to be a safe and cost-effective treatment modality. In a meta-analysis of recently published clinical trials incorporating more than 10.000 patients with chronic pain, the analgesic efficacy of acupuncture compared to other treatment modalities was highly statistically significant (P< 0.001). Therefore, acupuncture should be a part of the armamentarium of every physician who treats patients with chronic low back pain.
Panagiotis Zogopoulos is a resident of Neurosurgery at the General Hospital of Nikaia-Piraeus ??Agios Panteleimon?, Athens, Greece. He has received a 6-month advanced clinical training (clinical fellow) at the Neurosurgery Department of Osaka University Hospital in Japan. Several of his papers have been published in reputed peer-review journals and he has presented various researches in international conferences.