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TUESDAY, April 7, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Physical therapy may be just as good as surgery for older adults with a type of chronic lower back pain, new research suggests.
Standard treatments for lumbar spinal stenosis -- a painful, often disabling narrowing of the spinal canal -- are an operation known as surgical decompression or physical therapy.
But physical therapy is much less invasive and less risky than surgery.
"Adverse events from surgery range from 15 to 20 percent, with half of those being serious or life-threatening," said study author Anthony Delitto.
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