Relief For Chronic Back Pain May Be In A Vest

Thursday, March 1, 2001

HealthNSQ\0I8 Relief For Chronic Back Pain May Be In A Vest (NAPSA)—An ingenious new treatment may provide somerelief for the 20 million Americans who suffer from back pain every year. Back pain is the most common cause of disability for Americans under 45 and until recently it was a difficult problem to treat. Because the cause of lower back pain is poorly understood, only 10 to 20 percent of those people who seek treatment get a definitive diagnosis. Treatments for low back pain can include pain medication, chiropractic visits, massage or acupuncture, but some back pain does not improve with these treatments. Of the five million Americans who suffer chronic back pain, about one million may require surgery, but even surgery does not alwaysprovide a solution. That’s what happened with Dan Fairbairn of Denver, Col- A new vest allows people with back pain to undergo traction while standing. from work, which helps to relieve the pain. The vest was invented by Matt Dunfee in 1995 after he suffered a herniated disc. Because traveling to get traction treatments was so time con- orado, whose chronic back pain led to ruptured discs and diskectomy surgery, in which someofthe disks of his spine were removed. After the surgery, he still experienced chronic back pain that threatened to keep him from working. He heard about a vest known suming, he decided to invent his own traction device that he could wear while working. Designing a foam-filled vest, coupled with a weight-lifting belt, Dunfee then lined his vest with vertically positioned bicycle inner tubes. Dunfee’s invention was patented as the Lumbar Orthotrac™ non-invasive treatment designed to relieve back pain and checked to see if his insurance covered it. “A few weekslater, I got a prescription from my doctor, and I was faithfully wearing it twice a sively by Orthofix, Inc. When the vest is inflated on the patient, 30 to 50 percentof the patient’s body weight shifts and relieves the pressure that would otherwise compressthespine. as Orthotrac” Pneumatic Vest, a day,” said Fairbairn, who noticed immediate relief from the pain he had been experiencingfor years. He now wears the vest in the morning on his days off and in the afternoon after he returns home Vest, which is now marketed exclu- In a recent test on 300 people, who worethe vest for eight weeks, 67 percent showed significant improvement. For more information, call Orthofix at 800-535-4492.

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