Early management of persistent non-specific low back pain: summary of NICE guidance

doi:10.1136/bmj.b1805

Published 4 June 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1805
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1805

Practice

Guidelines

Early management of persistent non-specific low back pain: summary of NICE guidance

Pauline Savigny, health services research fellow¹, Paul Watson, professor of pain management and rehabilitation², Martin Underwood, professor of primary care research³, on behalf of the Guideline Development Group

¹ National Collaborating Centre for Primary Care, Royal College of General Practitioners, London SW7 1PU, ² Department of Health Science, Academic Unit, University of Leicester, Leicester LE5 4PW, ³ Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL

Correspondence to: M Underwood m.underwood@warwick.ac.uk

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

Most episodes of acute low back pain resolve spontaneously.¹However, among those in whom low back pain and disability havepersisted for over a year, few return to normal activities.Thus the focus for preventing the onset of long term disabilitycaused by non-specific low back pain is on the early managementof persistent low back pain (pain present for more than sixweeks and less than one year). No consensus exists on how tohelp health professionals and their patients choose the besttreatments for this condition.

This article summarises the most recent recommendations fromthe National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)on the early management of non-specific low back pain.¹ Thediagnosis of specific causes of low back pain (malignancy, infection,fracture, ankylosing spondylitis, and other inflammatory disorders)is not part of this guideline.

NICE recommendations are based on systematic reviews of bestavailable evidence. When . . . [Full text of this article]

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