Symptom control methods focus initially on providing comfort to keep the patient as active as possible while awaiting spontaneous recovery and, later in treatment, on aiding the home conditioning program if needed to improve comfortable activity tolerance. The methods traditionally include oral medications, such as acetaminophen and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (
NSAIDs), as well as physical treatments. They also include therapeutic injections.
Proving the efficacy of these methods to relieve acute low back symptoms is difficult due to the rapid rate of spontaneous recovery. The use of symptom control methods known to have less risk of harm than methods with proven efficacy, may thus be warranted if such methods are inexpensive and allow an individual to remain active or build activity tolerance through exercise.