(Reuters)
Updated: 2008-02-13 13:02

CHICAGO - The total cost of treating back pain in the United States has risen 65 percent in the past decade, but after all the pricey treatments, many people are still left with an aching back and an increasingly empty wallet, US researchers said on Tuesday.

They said treating spine problems in the United States costs $85.9 billion a year, rivaling the economic burden of treating cancer, which costs $89 billion.

Higher spending on prescription drugs, more advanced diagnostic tests and more frequent outpatient visits helped drive the increases, as well as greater patient demand for treatment and more use of spinal fusion surgery and instruments, they said.

Yet, for all of the spending, they found people with spine problems actually felt worse.

"Health care expenditures for people with spinal problems have increased substantially -- 65 percent since 1997. Within that, we found pharmaceutical expenditures have increased 171 percent," said Brook Martin of the University of Washington in Seattle, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"If we are spending that much money on spine problems, we would expect to see improvements in the health of the population," Martin said in a telephone interview.

"What this study shows is we are not seeing commensurate improvements among people with spine problems."

Martin and colleagues analyzed data from 1997 to 2005 from a nationally representative survey of patient health expenditures and health status.

They found that people with spine problems on average spent $4,695 per year in 1997 in inflation-adjusted dollars on health costs, compared with the average $2,731 spent for people without back problems.

The average health cost for spine patients in 2005 rose to $6,096, compared with $3,516 for people without those problems.

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