Chronic Low Back Pain: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Summary

Introduction: Non-specific chronic low back pain (CLBP) is one of the most frequent causes for patient disability and a general recurrent cause for medical consultation with high costs to public health. From rehabilitative medicine, physiotherapy is commonly offered. Although this treatment is aimed to reduce disability, pain severity and pain-related anxiety-depressive symptoms, many patients report partial improvement and recurrent intensive and disabling pain episodes. Therefore, a new approach in the treatment and rehabilitation of this pathology that takes into account psychosocial aspects that might be modulating pain is necessary.

Material and methods: This project aims to assess the efficacy of two complementary interventions to standard physical therapy, such as relaxation techniques and cognitive-behavioral intervention, to improve health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among patients with CLBP. It is hypothesized that groups receiving these complementary interventions will significantly improve their adherence to physiotherapy and the control of their pain and, ultimately, these aspects will facilitate a decreasing of pain intensity and better HRQoL.

For these purposes, a pre-post longitudinal design will be carried out, with follow-up assessments at 6 and 12 months in a sample of 66 participants. This sample will be divided into: control group (physiotherapy), intervention group 1 (physiotherapy and relaxation techniques-sophrology) and intervention group 2 (physiotherapy and cognitive-behavioral intervention).

Expected impact: Study results are not available yet. However, if working hypotheses are confirmed, a multidisciplinary model of care for CLBP will be empirically justified. This approach is expected to benefit HRQoL among these patients implying a significant short-mid term reduction of public health costs.

Conditions

• Chronic Pain

Interventions

OTHER

Physiotherapy

Physical therapy exercise program for CLBP patients. Its goal is to reduce pain and improve patients' health-related quality of life, functional capacity and well-being.

OTHER

Intervention 1

Relaxation techniques-sophrology consists of a set of physical and relaxation exercises that include breathing methods, visualization, modification of states of consciousness, etc. with the goal to enhance balance between body and mind to improve health-related quality of life, reduce pain and foster patients' well-being.

BEHAVIORAL

Intervention 2

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (in combination with motivational interviewing principles) is aimed to facilitate psychological adjustment and self-management of CLBP with the ultimate goal of increasing patients' health-related quality of life and well-being.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron Research Institute

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Carmina Castellano-Tejedor, PhD · Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron - Institut de Recerca Vall d'Hebron

• Elisa Barnola-Serra, MD · Hospital Vall d'Hebron

• Gemma Costa-Requena, MsC · Hospital Vall d'Hebron

• Pilar Lusilla-Palacios, MD, PhD · Hospital Vall d'Hebron

• Alex Ginés-Puertas · Hospital Universitario Vall d'Hebron - Parc Sanitari Pere i Virgili

• Laura Camprubí-Roca · Hospital Universitario Vall d'Hebron - Parc Sanitari Pere i Virgili

• Mª Lluisa Torrent-Bertran, MD · Hospital Vall d'Hebron

• Ana Palacios-González · Hospital Universitario Vall d'Hebron - Parc Sanitari Pere i Virgili

• Tamara Biedermann-Villagra, MD · Hospital Vall d'Hebron

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

30 Years

Max Age

80 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2013-03-31

Primary Completion

2014-11-30

Completion

2015-01-31

Countries

• Spain

Study Locations