The evolution of The Back Pain Centre stems from a distinct deficiency within the Back Pain Therapeutic Industry to provide quality effective rehabilitation for patients experiencing spine region pain which is so prevalent in our modern society due to its active corruption of movement proficiency.

Patients may indeed improve after receiving some form of conventional “treatment” for episodic back pain or a flare-up of acute back pain and believe that the “treatment” such as a massage, adjustment, and strengthening or stretching exercise was responsible for the recovery from symptoms. This, however, is entirely misguided and nearly all conventional physical therapy treatments are merely an association with recovery, not causation for recovery, meaning that patients just naturally get better with time and rest. The therapy delivered was, in fact, superfluous but hides behind a fake veil of perceived harmlessness, affordability and effectiveness.

In fact, the multitude of redundant treatments that accumulatively cost our nation millions of dollars is anything but harmless both economically and clinically.

The exhaustive physical therapy approaches are futile and unscientific in their approach as they entrench Failed Rehabilitation Syndrome, treating symptoms and ignoring cause. This is a very real problem, although not openly accepted or described in peer-reviewed literature and recent back pain management guidelines, despite clear statistics and research revealing increasing incidence, prevalence and recurrence of back pain symptoms with conventional therapy inclusive of Physiotherapy, Manual Therapy and Exercise Therapy. The industry is lost and sadly in denial of being lost.

Dr David Johnson, a Brain and Spinal Neurosurgeon recognized the pattern of templated, recycled, failing rehabilitation offered to thousands of his patients regardless of the outcome. Distinct patterns emerged such as core strengthening and repeated use of Pilates style or gym-based exercises in patients who were already adequately strong, increasing dependency on manual therapy, massage and adjustments, with very limited symptom relief. Attribution of pain symptoms to lumbar degeneration, age or obesity when it was obvious that back pain equally affected patients who were young with no significant degeneration and of normal body weight. There remained a massive disconnect between the financially lucrative therapy prescribed for the masses and the observable clinical presentation and outcomes.

His enquiry into the science of back pain research revealed something quite startling. Research and leading musculoskeletal textbooks on the subject used the term Back Pain interchangeably as a disease and a symptom. This ignorance is never applied to any other field of medicine yet it remains rampant in the back pain literature. Researchers even coin the condition of NON SPECIFIC LOW BACK PAIN, admitting their failing to conceptualise a Disease that causes Low Back Pain symptoms. Without first defining a disease the likelihood of successful treatment will be elusive. Imagine trying to treat headache and fever symptoms in Africa without understanding the disease of Malaria.

Back Pain symptoms have to be caused by a disease and The Back Pain Centre has defined that disease to be Movement Dysfunction. Integrating the services of City To Coast Neurosurgery, the Functional Movement Training Centre and the NeuroHAB program the Back Pain Centre is the first and only Clinical Centre of Excellence that effectively eliminates the Disease that causes Back Pain symptoms.

The imperative paradigm shift is understanding that Back Pain Symptoms are a Functional Central Nervous System Movement Disorder, not a Structural Musculoskeletal Disorder.