The epidemic of opioid abuse in the United States has pushed the CDC to establish new guidelines for providers to prescribe opioids to patients with chronic pain. Among the guidelines to use restraint when prescribing these medications that cause dependency and more times than not, addiction, the CDC is also encouraging providers to try other alternatives. Physical therapy can help patients not just relieve the pain, but also manage it and improve the quality of their patients’ lives.

Exercise therapy can help reduce pain and improve function in chronic low back pain (98), improve function and reduce pain in osteoarthritis of the knee (99) and hip (100), and improve well-being, fibromyalgia symptoms, and physical function in fibromyalgia (101). Multimodal and multidisciplinary therapies (e.g., therapies that combine exercise and related therapies with psychologically based approaches) can help reduce pain and improve function more effectively than single modalities (102,103).

Click on the following link to learn more and access the new guidelines form the CDC:

http://www.cdc.gov/media/dpk/2016/dpk-opioid-prescription-guidelines.html