National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Release Guidelines for Acute Pain

New guidelines aim to improve treatment of musculoskeletal pain.

Chiropractors, osteopaths and patients now have new guidelines to provide the best available information to treat acute musculoskeletal pain.

The guidelines provide clear, evidence-based information on how to manage pain in the low back, neck, upper back, knee and shoulder. Special information sheets for consumers have also been developed to help with this process.

According to Project Leader Professor Peter Brooks, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and coordinator of the National Action Network of the Bone and Joint Decade, the need for clinicians and patients to work together to formulate a plan to relieve acute musculoskeletal pain was the key message contained in the guidelines.

“The goal of the project is to produce a resource that would inform practice in this area for the range of clinicians working with acute musculoskeletal pain, as well as offering a separate consumer information document to promote partnership in decision-making,” Professor Brooks said.

This new resource, Evidence-Based Management of Acute Musculoskeletal Pain, and consumer information sheets are available online at www.nhmrc.gov.au/publications. Evidence-Based Management of Acute Musculoskeletal Pain, which has been approved by the NHMRC, is the result of a research project that involved a multidisciplinary review of the scientific literature by the Australian Acute Musculoskeletal Pain Guidelines Group. Clinicians from a range of disciplines were involved in the evidence review, including general practitioners, consultant physicians and surgeons, chiropractors, physiotherapists, osteopaths and epidemiologists. The project was funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing. Two COCA Executive, Henry Pollard (acute shoulder pain) and Simon French (acute low back pain), were on the working parties for the development of the guidelines.

The Chair of the NHMRC’s Health Advisory Committee, Professor Adele Green, said the NHMRC was pleased to approve the guidelines, as they are a timely evidence-based resource for health workers and consumers who are faced with managing many of these common and debilitating conditions.

“The guidelines will give patients new insight into their condition, and give them confidence that the treatment options presented to them are based on the best available scientific evidence,” Professor Green said.