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Back pain

Low back pain is the world's leading cause of disability, affecting 619 million people as of 2020. Yet of the people who bring chronic back pain to primary care, at least 90 percent are estimated to have primary back pain: no underlying disease or structural lesion reliably explains it. The guidelines' shared advice is unexpectedly simple. Keep moving within what the pain allows, try non-drug options like heat first, and skip routine imaging.

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Lower Back Pain: Why the Scan Shows Nothing, and How Four Countries Cope

Back pain is the world's leading cause of disability, and at least 90 percent of chronic primary-care cases are estimated to have no lesion a scan can find.

Aug 15, 202610 min readUnited States, Germany, Japan, South Korea

Countries covered

Country	Articles
United States	Lower Back Pain: Why the Scan Shows Nothing, and How Four Countries Cope
Germany	Lower Back Pain: Why the Scan Shows Nothing, and How Four Countries Cope
Japan	Lower Back Pain: Why the Scan Shows Nothing, and How Four Countries Cope
South Korea	Lower Back Pain: Why the Scan Shows Nothing, and How Four Countries Cope