There are many studies describing the way treatment providers fail to follow clinical guidelines for managing acute low back pain – and because there are inconsistencies between various guidelines for chronic low back pain, it’s not surprising that people with back pain (whether acute or chronic) get a little confused about what to do. Of … Read more... Wilk V
13 Vote(s)
July 20, 2010
June 8, 2010
Group-based CBT for troublesome low back pain
These two papers have created a bit of a storm in the health news recently – a six-session CBT group programme for chronic low back pain that not only provides good outcomes, but is also cost-effective? Unbelievable! And it’s not delivered exclusively by any specific health professionals. AND it’s delivered in primary care! My take … Read more... Hanse
15 Vote(s)
15 Vote(s)
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February 27, 2010
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Beneficial And Low Cost Treatment For Back Pain
An article published in this week's issue of The Lancet reports that group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can reduce low-back pain at a low cost to the health-care provider. Furthermore, one year after the start of treatment, the improvement was sustained. Ranked as one of the top three most disabling conditions in the developed World, persistent low-back pain is increasingly common...
5 Vote(s)
5 Vote(s)
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February 24, 2010
Low back pain: unfit? just not doing much? or something else
For as long as I’ve been working in pain management (and probably well before), I’ve heard patients being described as ‘deconditioned’. From what we know about the effects of staying in bed because of illness or injury, it makes sense to think that if a person does very little they will become unfit. [...]... Verbunt JA, Smeets RJ, & Wittink HM. (2010) Cause or ef
17 Vote(s)
17 Vote(s)
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January 12, 2010
Two tools for screening risk: STarT Back Tool and Örebro Musculoskeletal Pain Screening Questionnaire
I wrote yesterday about the difficulty there is in grouping patients so that the right treatment is given to the right person at the right time. Today’s post coincidentally follows a similar line – two screening tools that discriminate between ‘high risk’ and ‘low risk’ people with low back pain. The value of [...]... Hill, J., Dunn, K., Main, C., & H
18 Vote(s)
18 Vote(s)
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December 2, 2009
October 15, 2009
Accepting low back pain: Is it related to a good quality of life?
The purpose of pain management is, in the end, of no earthly use if it doesn’t change a person’s quality of life. It’s fine to maybe reduce pain intensity (remembering that most pain reduction approaches seem to reduce pain by around 10 – 40%), and it’s great to improve function – but unless the [...]... Mason VL, Mathias B, & Skevington SM. (2008) Acc
14 Vote(s)
14 Vote(s)
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October 6, 2009
Self-care or medical care for low back pain: what patients want
For a while I’ve been asking what constitutes ’self management’ for chronic pain. On the one hand there are a group of people who firmly believe that regular medical treatment (including injections every three months or so) is a perfectly legitimate way to maintain a normal life. On the other hand there are people [...]... Saunders KW, Von Korff M, Pruitt SD, & Moore JE
19 Vote(s)
19 Vote(s)
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June 15, 2009
Early management of low back pain – activity is good, early self-management is best!
It must be really difficult to be a reductionist, biomedically-oriented doctor who believes fervently in the need to ‘abolish pain’ in order for people to recover from low back pain. It must be even more difficult when the ’source of the nociception’ fails to be identified even after numerous placebo-controlled ‘diagnostic’ nerve blocks have [...]...
5 Vote(s)
5 Vote(s)
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May 11, 2009
Horses for courses: or how to choose the best person to get spinal injection treatment
There are many different ways to report on the findings of a clinical study: this one intrigued me because it looks at who does well after radiofrequency and injection treatments for low back pain.In a post hoc study of 161 people receiving these treatments for back pain and sciatica, subsequently treated in an open prospective [...]... van Wijk, R., Geurts, J., Lousberg, R., Wynne, H.,
18 Vote(s)
18 Vote(s)
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