TUNING forks, brushes and erasers can all help to quickly and cheaply reveal which painkiller to prescribe for back pain.
From a patient’s description, doctors struggle to distinguish between neuropathic pain from nerve damage, such as in sciatica, and pain from inflammation, yet each requires a different painkiller. Only expensive tests such as MRI scans reveal the source precisely, leading Joachim Scholz of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and his colleagues to look for a quicker, cheaper way.
The team compiled a list of quick questions and physical tests and assessed the response of patients diagnosed with each type of…
