Patient Education for Patients With Back Pain Referred to Physical Therapy

Utah System of Higher Education (USHE)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Low Back Pain

Treatments: Other: Control; Behavioral: Patient Education

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02648373

IRB00072901

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to evaluate patients with low back pain who are scheduled to begin physical therapy but have not yet had their first appointment to better understand their beliefs and attitudes and to evaluate the effects of an educational session about low back pain.

Full description

The investigators will conduct a randomized trial to examine the effectiveness of a patient education session provided prior to beginning physical therapy on outcomes of usual physical therapy for acute/sub-acute low back pain patients. The study compares two groups, one group will be treated with usual physical therapy with no pre-treatment education and the other group will also receive the pre-treatment. Patients will be followed after 6 weeks and 3 months. Physical therapy care is left to the discretion of the physical therapist in conjunction with the patient. Outcomes will include pain and disability, and patients attitude and believes (pain catastrophizing, fear avoidance behavior). The overall hypothesis is that the additional educational treatment may address and improve pain, disability and fear.

Enrollment: 76 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 60 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Chief complaint of non-specific low back pain scheduled to receive outpatient physical therapy
• age 18-60
• duration of current symptoms < 8weeks
• referred to physical therapy from a non-surgeon provider
• no treatment received for low back pain in past year other than physician office visits.

Exclusion criteria

• Diagnosis provided by the referral source indicating a specific pathoanatomical source for LBP including fracture, spondylolesthesis, ankylosing spondylitis, radiculopathy
• any red flags in the patient's general medical screening questionnaire (i.e. tumor, metabolic diseases etc.).

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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76 participants in 2 patient groups

Education

Experimental group

Description:

Patients receive an educational video about low back pain based on the Consumer Reports Choosing Wisely recommendation for patients with back pain to avoid early imaging and remain as active as possible. After the video the evaluator and patient discussed key themes from the video and the patient was able to ask any questions. Previously scheduled physical therapy then began with treatment at the therapist's discretion.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Patient Education

Control

Active Comparator group

Description:

Previously scheduled physical therapy was provided with treatment at the therapist's discretion. No educational intervention was provided before beginning physical therapy

Treatment:

Other: Control