The New Back Doctor [antikvár]

introaucnon One evening not long ago, I was waiting to deliver some after-dinner remarks on the nature of back pain to an audience concerned with accident prevention. I found myself seated at the head table next to an expert in industrial safety. My dinner companion wasn't a doctor but he had acquired a good deal of knowledge about industrial back injuries. He told me that he had heard me speak before and had enjoyed my comments on the misconceptions many people have about their backs. But he was curious about some of my remarks. "You aren't going to tell them there's no such thing as a slipped disc?" he asked. I replied that I would. "But," he said, "don't you get into trouble with your colleagues, going around saying things like that?" At that moment I realized that this safety expert was harboring his own misconception — that I was a squealer on my own profession, a sort of medical stool pigeon who was revealing secret truths about the human back. That incident, described in the Introduction to the original Back Doctor^ took place nearly twenty years ago. So much has happened to back care since then — so many advances, so much new technology — and yet the problem remains. Back pain is still the major source of recurring disability under the age of forty-five. It costs the North American economy more than $50 billion a year in reduced productivity, replacement costs, compensation payments, and medical expenses. Back pain still strikes eight out of every ten of us at some time in our adult life and, for an unfortunate minority, it becomes a lifelong problem.