How bad will your back pain get?
Hello
This week I want to share with you something I discovered.
Having helped so many people with back pain, we wondered what prognosis of people was who developed back pain.
Prognosis here means, what is likely outcome for someone who has back pain going to be? How will the problem change over time and what are the chances of a good outcome.
Let us look at what I found.
I found a research paper called “Prognosis for patients with chronic low back pain: inception cohort study”.
In the paper they wanted to study what the normal course of the problem will be over time and if they could discover any markers that will indicate that the problem will turn chronic and/ or severe.
Let us look at what they found.
“The study sample was a subcohort of an inception cohort of 973 consecutive patients presenting to primary care with acute low back pain (<2 weeks’ duration). 406 participants whose pain persisted for three months formed the inception cohort of patients with chronic low back pain.”
They found that “The cumulative probability of being pain-free was 35% at nine months and 42% at 12 months and for complete recovery was 35% at nine months and 41% at 12 months.”
Already low odds of a complete recovery after a year.
“Of the 259 participants who had not recovered from pain related disability at entry to the chronic study, 47% had recovered by 12 months.”
Your chances of recovery are less than 50%.
These are the factors they found that indicated their problem would lead to a poor outcome or prognosis.
“The prognosis is less favorable for those who have taken previous sick leave for low back pain, have high disability levels or high pain intensity at onset of chronic low back pain, have lower education, perceive themselves as having a high risk of persistent pain”.
With the changes of recovery being so low when after a year, would you rather try something with a long track record of success?
Jason
