Khodakarami Nima
Department of Health Policy and Management, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
Healthcare (Basel). 2020 Feb 24;8(1):44. doi: 10.3390/healthcare8010044.
Low back pain (LBP) is a pandemic and costly musculoskeletal condition in the United States (U.S.). Patients with LBP may endure surgery, injections, and expensive visits to emergency departments. Some suggest that using physical therapy (PT) or chiropractic in the earlier stage of LBP reduces the utilization of expensive health services and lowers the treatment costs. Given that there are costs and benefits with each of these treatments, the remaining question is in a short period of time which of these treatments is optimal. The purpose of this study was to investigate the cost-effectiveness of chiropractic versus PT in the U.S. A decision tree analytic model was used for estimating the economic outcomes. The findings showed that the total average cost in the chiropractic group was $48.56 lower than the PT group. The findings also showed that the daily adjusted life years (DALY) in the chiropractic group was 0.0043 higher than the PT group. Chiropractic care was shown to be a cost-effective alternative compared with PT for adults with at least three weeks of LBP over six months.
在美国，腰痛（LBP）是一种广泛流行且成本高昂的肌肉骨骼疾病。患有腰痛的患者可能需要忍受手术、注射以及前往急诊科的高额就诊费用。一些人认为，在腰痛的早期阶段采用物理治疗（PT）或整脊疗法可减少昂贵医疗服务的使用，并降低治疗成本。鉴于这些治疗方法都有成本和收益，剩下的问题是在短时间内哪种治疗方法是最佳的。本研究的目的是调查在美国整脊疗法与物理治疗相比的成本效益。采用决策树分析模型来估计经济结果。研究结果表明，整脊疗法组的总平均成本比物理治疗组低48.56美元。研究结果还表明，整脊疗法组的每日调整生命年（DALY）比物理治疗组高0.0043。对于患有至少三周腰痛且持续六个月以上的成年人，与物理治疗相比，整脊疗法被证明是一种具有成本效益的替代方法。
