Low-back pain (LBP) affects millions of individuals in North America and is a major health problem. The medical costs of low back pain are enormous resulting in absenteeism, disability and poor quality life style. No one satisfactory treatment for low back pain exists and almost every week a new therapy is developed. In the last 2 decades, traction has been advocated as a panacea for back pain. There are several type of devices ranging from mechanical and manual traction.
Today, many physicians have fancy traction devices in their clinics which they hype up as a cure for sciatica and other types of back pain. It is recommended that one enroll in traction treatment sessions 1-2 times a week for 12-16 weeks and voila, you will be cured. One should not forget that traction treatments do not come cheap. All the data on traction treatment and its benefits come directly from the mouth of people who make these machines or physicians who promote these devices.
So do they work?
Researchers looked at randomized controlled studies to determine if traction really worked. More than 2200 patients who received 1045 sessions of traction were evaluated from several clinical trials.
And what did the researchers find?
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