BMJ 1998;317:1083 ( 17 October )

Letters

Outcome of low back pain in general practice

    Evidence based practice can improve outcome
    Study's methods may have altered patients' perceptions of their pain
    Use of disease specific questionnaire may have influenced results
    Authors' reply

Evidence based practice can improve outcome

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---Croft et al describe 12 month outcome in low back pain.1 Their paper documents the disease course, but it is surprising that they do not describe patient management. The Royal College of General Practitioners has published evidence based guidelines for the management of acute back pain. 2 3 These guidelines recommend active management followed by manipulative treatment at 4-6 weeks if active management fails. An evidence based book for patients with back pain (The Back Book) was launched with the guidelines.4

We believe that evidence based management of acute back pain will improve outcome. While undertaking a prospective randomised controlled trial of manipulative treatment that aimed to compare the outcome of osteopathy and of physiotherapy we inadvertently showed the effectiveness of the college's guidelines. Two general practices in Kingston-upon-Hull participated in this study, with a total practice population of 15 000. Both practices are in deprived areas.

All patients presenting with . . . [Full text of this article]
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Outcome of low back pain in general practice: a prospective study
Peter R Croft, Gary J Macfarlane, Ann C Papageorgiou, Elaine Thomas, and Alan J Silman
BMJ 1998 316: 1356-1359. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Howie, J. G R, Heaney, D. J, Maxwell, M., Walker, J. J, Freeman, G. K, Rai, H. (1999). Quality at general practice consultations: cross sectional survey. BMJ 319: 738-743 [Abstract] [Full text]  
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ