The Benefit of Structured Triage of Patients in the Primary Health Care Seeking Care for Low Back Pain

Not Applicable

• Conditions: Low Back Pain
• Interventions: Other: Back pain screening test

• Registration Number: NCT03368521
• Lead Sponsor: FoU Center Spenshult

Brief Summary

This study aims to investigate if a low back pain screening tool is helpful for the caregivers to direct the rehabilitation in a more efficient way, at an earlier stage. Primary Health care centers in the municipality of Halmstad, Sweden will be enrolled to participate in the study as either "Control" or "intervention". The primary Health care centers who are enrolled taking part in the intervention, will use the provided screening tool when taking care of patients seeking care for low back pain. Scorings from the screening tool will "label" the patients as one of Three pre-defined risk levels. The caregiver will then use the provided risk level when deciding how to proceed the rehabilitation. Based on the risk level identified, the patient is directed to one of three levels of treatments - including simple advice; physiotherapy; or multimodal rehabilitation. The screening tool is used as a complement to the examination, allowing the physiotherapist /GP to decide how to proceed with rehabilitation using the back screening tool, together with Clinical examinations. The Control Group consists of patients recruited when seeking care for back pain at a Primary Health Care service who has been randomly selected as "Control". The care givers at the Control primary Health care will conduct as usual, not using the back pain screening tool in their Clinical examinations.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2017-11-01
• Study First Submitted: 2017-11-14
• Status Verified: 2017-12
• Study First Submitted QC: 2017-12-05
• Study First Posted: 2017-12-11
• Last Update Submitted: 2017-12-20
• Last Update Posted: 2017-12-22
• Primary Completion: 2019-06
• Study Completion: 2019-06

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: UNKNOWN
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 150

Inclusion Criteria

• Seeking care for low back pain at any of the included primary Health care.

Exclusion Criteria

• Red flags

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Back pain screening group	Back pain screening test	Includes the Group of patients where the care giver has used the back pain screening tests studied in order to judge how to proceed with rehabilitation, which level of rehabilitation is appropriate.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Number of physiotherapy treatments	12 months after inclusion	Number of treatments given by physiotherapist

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
back pain questionnaire - The Keele STarT Back Screening Tool	12 months after inclusion	The Keele STarT Back Screening Tool, is a prognostic tool helping clinicians identify risk factors for persistent back pain. 9 questions. Total score range from 0 to 9 (best- to worse)
back pain questionnaire - The Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire	12 months after inclusion	The Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire assess self-rated physical disability Total score range from 0-24 (best to worse disability)
work ability - Work productivity and activity impairment questionnaire (WPAI)	12 months after inclusion	Work productivity and activity impairment questionnaire (WPAI) with 6 questions assessing the impact of the disease on work and other daily activities during the previous 7 days (absenteeism, presenteeism, impaired activities outside work, and overall work impairment). Each component is expressed as percentage of impairment due to the disease (0-100%) where a higher percentage indicates a greater reduction.
work ability - The work ability index (WAI)	12 months after inclusion	The work ability index (WAI) single-item question concerned the item "current work ability compared with the lifetime best", with a possible score of 0 ("completely unable to work") to 10 ("work ability at its best")
back pain questionnaire - Pain distribution	12 months after inclusion	Pain distribution (numbers of marked regions and location) will be measured by a pain mannequin divided into 18 body regions.The patients mark each region with pain lasting more than three months during the past 12 months. The total number of regions giving a total score 0-18 (few to several regions, best- to worse).

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

FoUSpenshult; 🇸🇪 Halmstad, Sweden