|
 Researchers offered 300 patients with lower back pain two advice
sessions explaining the source of their discomfort and providing
instruction on proper lifting techniques. Roughly half of them also
got 10 treatment sessions of personalized physical therapy over 10
weeks.
The physical therapy group had significantly greater reductions in
activity limitations at 10, 26 and 52 weeks than the advice group
and they also had less back pain at 5, 10 and 26 weeks.
“Our findings suggest that advice works for many people but that
individualized physical therapy achieves more rapid reduction in
pain and in the long term superior improvements in
function/disability,” lead study author Jon Ford of La Trobe
University in Bundoora, Australia said by email.
Low-back disorders are one of the most common afflictions that bring
people to the doctor, and many of these patients with acute problems
have persistent symptoms for at least a year, Ford and colleagues
note in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
To be included in the study, patients needed to have experienced
pain for six weeks to six months and have one of five specific types
of back pain: disc herniation, reducible disc pain, non-reducible
disc pain, joint pain or multifactorial persistent pain.
Patients assigned to customized physical therapy in the study using
specific exercise techniques tailored to the type of injury and
individual barriers to recovery. Some, for example, focused on
posture and lifting to ease disc pain, while others with disc
herniation worked on motor control targeting specific muscle groups.
Participants in both the advice and the physical therapy groups
improved over time, but the people who received the customized
exercise sessions generally did better.
One shortcoming of the study is that the advice group had far fewer
encounters with health providers than the physical therapy group,
the authors acknowledge.
[to top of second column] |
“There was an 8-session difference in treatment groups, so there was
a notable difference in provider attention that could account for
some of these group differences,” Steven George, a physical therapy
researcher at the University of Florida who wasn’t involved in the
study, said by email.
In addition, the differences in outcomes between the two groups
aren’t that large, as is often the case in studies of back pain,
noted Julie Fritz, associate dean for research at the College of
Health at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
“Back pain is very common and many patients are advised to attend
physical therapy at some point,” Fritz said by email. “The challenge
for researchers is to continue to examine which particular physical
therapy interventions work for specific types of patients with low
back pain and determine the optimal timing for physical therapy
intervention.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1PoQKkC British Journal of Sports Medicine,
online October 20, 2015.
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
