5 years later…still feeling Great! Hear Karen’s testimony!

Dr. Linden D.C., Certified Spinal Decompression Therapist

FEATURED ARTICLE ON FRONT PAGE OF WEST CENTRAL TRIBUNE JULY 10, 2007

TACKLING BACK PAIN

Decompression therapy offers option for treating chronic back pain

By Anne Polta annep@wctrib.com

WILLMAR — Karen Hanson was so plagued with chronic back pain that it was altering her life.  Back surgery didn’t help. Pain therapy was effective for about three months and then the pain returned.     She stopped going fishing. Because she could no longer sit in a car for more than 15 minutes, she rarely visited her family in St. Cloud anymore.  “I was working around my pain. It was limiting my ability to do anything,” she said.
Dr. Thomas Linden sees lots of patients like Hanson.  “I’ve taken care of many, many patients with back pain,” said Linden, owner of the Linden Chiropractic Clinic. “There was always a certain percentage that didn’t respond to conservative treatment.”  Believing there needed to be another option, Linden recently began offering nonsurgical spinal decompression at his clinic in Willmar’s Skylark Mall. His clinic is the first in Minnesota to join SpinalAid, a franchised network that provides training and standards for practitioner members who offer spinal decompression.

For Hanson, the therapy turned out to be the answer she was seeking.   She started 20 sessions of spinal decompression at the end of April, and by the end of June her pain was significantly relieved. “I have had more pain-free days than I can’t even remember when,” she said. “I am so hopeful.”

It’s a condition that is notoriously challenging to treat. Some patients will eventually get better on their own; others might need surgery. Among those who undergo surgery, some will improve while others won’t. “There is that gap between who will respond to surgery and who will respond to conservative care,” Linden said. People with severe or chronic back pain might no longer be able to work, he said. Billions of dollars are spent annually in the United States on treatment, outpatient visits and prescription drugs for back pain.  By offering spinal decompression, “it’s another option for people,” Linden said. “I wanted to be able to provide the best care for my patients. I didn’t want to be just another doctor with a table.”

The FDA-approved therapy is an advanced form of traction consisting of a pull-and-release series to the spine. This creates a negative pressure within the discs that make up the spine, allowing herniated discs to shrink back to their normal state and the surrounding tissue to heal, Linden explained.  Unlike old-fashioned traction, the therapy — which costs a fraction of what surgery costs — can be specifically targeted to whichever level of the spine needs treatment.   The newest decompression tables, such as the one Linden installed last year, can be computer-programmed to deliver more or less tension to the spine, or a longer or shorter session, depending on what’s prescribed for the patient.   The therapy is most likely to gain results for people who have chronic moderate to severe back pain caused by disc herniation or degeneration of the spine, Linden said.  Certain patients are excluded: those who have implants, such as rods, in their spine and those with severe osteoporosis.

By the time someone becomes a candidate for decompression, he or she has already undergone diagnostic magnetic resonance imaging. There may have been a consultation with a neurologist or orthopedic surgeon. In some cases the patient has already had surgery or even multiple surgeries.  “Most people, by this time, have tried everything else,” Linden said. “If this doesn’t help them, then it’s on to surgery.”