By Michael Barrie, OSU EM Assistant Professor
A great emergency medicine study in this month’s JAMA: Friedman et. al “Naproxen with cyclobenzaprine, oxycodone/acetaminophen, or placebo for treating acute low back pain: A randomized clinical trial.” This was a randomized, double-blind controlled trial to see if adding narcotics or cyclobenzaprine to naprosyn helps improve symptoms in patients with lumbar back pain compared to those that received naprosyn plus placebo. They showed there was NO benefit.
Conclusions and Relevance Among patients with acute, nontraumatic, nonradicular LBP presenting to the ED, adding cyclobenzaprine or oxycodone/acetaminophen to naproxen alone did not improve functional outcomes or pain at 1-week follow-up. These findings do not support use of these additional medications in this setting.
AMP EM 