Watch Your Back! How the Back Pain Industry Is Costing Us More and Giving Us Less – and What You Can Do to Inform and Empower Yourself in Seeking Treatment

Watch Your Back! is an enjoyable new book by Dr. Richard Deyo that offers patients, physicians and policymakers an insightful, evidence-based, and highly readable account of the many, many options for people caring for their aching backs. Deyo’s voice is personable and knowledgeable – as if you’re talking over the backyard fence with your next-door-neighbor…a neighbor who just happens to have conducted research on just about every back pain treatment mentioned in his book. That research evidence is broken up with real world accounts of patients’ fruitless searches for pain relief and includes case studies of such famous back pain sufferers as General David Fridovich, Cyndy McCain, Dr. Jerome Groopman and President John F. Kennedy. The text walks the reader through 15 short chapters of the major treatments available for back pain including medication, surgery, injections, ablations, fusions, gadgets, complementary approaches, and self-care. Some chapters really sing, such as those on diagnoses and imaging techniques, the marketing of back pain treatments, the proliferation of fusion techniques, and the role of the placebo effects underlying effective and ineffective therapies alike. Some chapters were mild disappointments, such as the discussion on complementary practices. Spinal manipulation, acupuncture and massage are described as generally safe, feel good treatments that work for many people. However, too many words in this sparse chapter were spent on a historical review of Drs. Palmer and Still as the originators of chiropractic and osteopathy, while not enough were devoted to the increasing, and increasingly sound, evidence from randomized controlled trials on the efficacy of complementary treatments for back pain. Perhaps the best chapters are those empowering patients to actively take their recovery from back pain into their own hands. Encouraged are the use of treatment decision aids and such self-care strategies as stress management, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and exercise. The book concludes with recommendations for policymakers. Overall, Watch Your Back! provides a comprehensive yet concise look at what we’re doing right in the treatment of back pain, and what treatments are not making an impact. This book is recommended for spine care professionals and their patients alike.