Current clinical practice guidelines state that 90% of acute lower back pain patients will recover within four to six weeks, with or without treatment. However, new research published in The British Medical Journal has found that recovery from low back pain is much slower than previously thought.
Australian researchers from The George Insitute studied patients with acute low back pain for a year. The results from the study found that even with treatment, after two months only half of the patients had recovered from the original episode of pain. After about one year, 40% were still reporting that their back was still causing them pain.
