Category Archives: Back Pain

Psychological Interventions For Non-Specific Chronic Low Back Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:

Ms Emma Ho | BAppSc(Phty)(Hons), PhD Candidate
The University of Sydney                                          
Faculty of Medicine and Health | Charles Perkins Centre Musculoskeletal Research Hub | Sydney NeuroMusculoskeletal Research Collaborative
Faculty of Medicine and Health, The Back Pain Research Team, Sydney Musculoskeletal Health, The Kolling Institute, School of Health Sciences

Emma Ho

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study? 

Response: Adults with chronic low back pain (lasting for more than 12 weeks) not only experience physical disability but can also suffer psychological distress in the form of anxiety, depression, and fear avoidance (avoiding movement for fear of pain).

Clinical guidelines therefore consistently recommend a combination of exercise and psychosocial therapies for managing chronic low back pain. However, not much is known about the different types of psychological therapies available as well as their comparative effectiveness and safety, leaving doctors and patients often unclear about the best choice of treatment. Accordingly, the aim of our systematic review with network meta-analysis was to determine the comparative effectiveness and safety of psychological interventions for chronic non-specific low back pain.

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Risk of Low Back Pain in Women May Vary with Age of Menarche

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Ingrid Heuch MD, PhD
Department of Research, Innovation and Education,
Division of Clinical Neuroscience
Oslo University Hospital, Norway

Dr. Heuch

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?

Response: Low back pain represents a major health problem in today’s society. In this study more than 27 000 women aged 20-69 years were included in the Trøndelag Health Study, HUNT, in Norway. As in most population-based studies, women were more likely to be affected with chronic low back pain than men. Our study showed a U-shaped relationship between age at menarche (age at a woman’s first menstruation) and risk of low back pain, also after many years. Both women with an early or late age at menarche experienced higher risk of low back pain. Compared to women with menarche at age 14 years, menarche at age 11 years increased the risk by 32% and menarche at age 17 years by 43%. No association was found between age at menopause and risk of low back pain.

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Telerehabilitation Found Effective for Low Back Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Mark W Werneke, PT, MS, Dip. MDT
Net Health Systems, Inc.
Pittsburgh PA

Mark W Werneke

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study? 

Response: Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has had a profound effect on changing health care delivery systems and resulted in a rapid growth of telerehabilitation care models. In addition, patients experiencing chronic low back pain increased during the pandemic which was confounded by mandatory lockdowns and lack of physical activity. There is scant literature demonstrating telerehabilitation’s effectiveness and efficiency for patients with low back pain seeking rehabilitation services during COVID-19 pandemic compared to traditional in-person office visit care.

The primary aim of our study was to examine the association between telerehabilitation treatments administered during every day clinical practice and functional status, number of visits, and patient satisfaction with treatment result outcomes compared to in-person care observed during the height of the pandemic. Using Focus on Therapeutic Outcomes (FOTO) database, our sample consisted of 91,117 episodes of care from 1,398 clinics located in 46/50 US states. Propensity score matching analytics was used to match episodes of care with or without telerehabilitation and standardized differences (S-D) were used to assess whether successful matching between telerehabilitation and no-telerehabilitation subgroups allowed for valid outcome comparisons.

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As Opioid Prescriptions Fall, Alternate Prescriptions for Pain Relief Increase

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Lauren R. Gorfinkel MPH
New York State Psychiatric Institute
New York, NY
Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study? 

Response: The opioid crisis has led to clear declines in opioid prescribing across North America, however, chronic pain remains an extremely common health problem with limited treatment options. This study was therefore interested in using nationally-representative data to find out whether alternative pain medications are growing more popular as opioid prescriptions decline.

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Minimally Invasive Spinal Surgery for Leg or Back Pain Linked to Improved Pain Relief and Function

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dr. Mohamad Bydon MD
Professor of Neurosurgery
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, Minnesota

:Dr. Bydon MD

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?

Response: Patients presenting with back or leg pain due to degenerative lumbar spine disease often undergo spinal fusion to mitigate the symptoms and halt the progression of the disease.

PainRelief.com: What are the main findings?

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) in the lumbar spine encompasses a variety of techniques, such as percutaneous screw placement and operation via tubular retractors, and aims to limit the distortion of patients’ anatomy as much as possible. Eventually, compared to open fusion, MIS fusion is associated with decreased muscle destruction, incision size, and time-to-mobilization.

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Astronauts Risk Herniated Discs and Back Pain From Space Flight

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dr. Radostin Penchev
Johns Hopkins Medicine

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?

Response: Although fewer than 600 people have travelled to space, human space travel is expected to exponentially surge with several companies now offering space excursions as well as with the establishment of the U.S. Space Force in 2019. In parallel with this effort, NASA plans to have a sustained presence on the Moon by 2028.

It turns out that more than 50% of astronauts experience back pain (termed space adaptation back pain) during their mission and are over 4 times more likely to suffer from herniated discs than the normal population. As such, physicians should anticipate a surge in space-related back pathology. More importantly, understanding the cause of back pain in astronauts may also improve the care for other austere environment populations including deep sea divers, fighter pilots and high-altitude explorers.

In this comprehensive review of the literature, we examined the epidemiology, potential causes, and treatments for spinal pain in astronauts.

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Back Pain: Advice and Education Provide Small Short-Term Improvements in Pain and Disability

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Caitlin Jones PhD Candidate
The University of Sydney
Faculty of Medicine and Health, Sydney School of Public Health
Institute for Musculoskeletal Health
Royal Prince Alfred Hospita
Australia

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Despite advice being recommended internationally as a treatment for spinal pain, the evidence behind that was uncertain and out of date. We didn’t think that the strong and widespread recommendation to provide advice was reflective of the available evidence. There have been multiple, more recent, trials of advice and education with varying results, so it was a good time to collate and summarise these with a systematic review.

Our main findings were that advice and education had a small effect on pain and disability compared to no advice and education, or placebo in the short term. The effects were around 10 points of improvement for pain and 5 points for disability on a 0 to 100-point scale. There was evidence of no effect at all other time points (immediate, intermediate and long term). The specific content of the advice didn’t seem to make much difference.

We compared simple contemporary advice (such as advice to keep active and to avoid bed rest and reassurance about the positive prognosis) to more comprehensive advice, such as ergonomic advice (specific postural and biomechanical information) or pain neuroscience education, and found them all to be about equally effective. Whether the participants’ symptoms were acute or chronic, the intensity of the intervention in terms of time spent with a therapist, how the intervention was delivered and the depth and type of the content didn’t impact outcomes.

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“Empowered Relief” Program Equips Patients With Effective Pain Relief Skills

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Beth Darnall, PhD
Director, Stanford Pain Relief Innovations Lab
Associate Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine
Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (by courtesy)
Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute (affiliate faculty)
Palo Alto, CA 94304

Dr. Darnall

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?

Best pain care integrates patient education and tools to help them manage pain and reduce their symptoms1. Multi-session psychological or “behavioral” pain treatment approaches, such as 8-session cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), are effective for equipping people with pain management skills. However, our prior research showed that patient access to these treatments is often poor, in part due to the costs and time burdens (e.g., up to 16 hours of treatment time).2

Findings from our study suggest that a one-time 2-hour pain relief skills class (“Empowered Relief”) was non-inferior to 8-session CBT for reducing multiple symptoms, including pain catastrophizing, pain intensity, and pain interference at 3 months post-treatment. We also found the single-session pain class imparted substantial reductions for pain bothersome, sleep disturbance, anxiety, fatigue and depression.

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Back Pain: SelfBACK app To Help Patients Find Pain Relief From Self-Managed Program

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Louise Fleng Sandal PhD
Adjunkt, Institut for Idræt og Biomekanik
SDU University of Southern Denmark

Dr. Sandal

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?

Response: Low back pain is a globally prevalent condition with a high economic cost. Many people seek help with primary care from their general practitioner, physiotherapist or chiropractor. Evidence-based guidelines on first line treatment include learning to self-manage, staying active, exercising and learning about the condition. However, many find this difficult without advice and support, but primary care physicians often lack the time and resources to support self-management.

Digital solutions, such as smartphone technology, utilizing artificial intelligence can be used to tailor self-management support to the individual and be available at the individuals convenience.

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New Implantable Technology Stimulates Spinal Cord for Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Christopher M Proctor, PhD
Group Leader, Bionic Systems Group
BBSRC David Phillips Fellow
Electrical Engineering Division University of Cambridge
United Kingdom

Dr. Proctor

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What types of pain might be amenable to treatment with this device?

Response: Spinal cord stimulation has been shown to be effective for patients with severe neuropathic pain. However, the most effective devices that are clinically available today require a rather invasive surgical procedure. Our innovation aims to reduce the surgical burden while providing the best possible treatment.

PainRelief.com: Would you describe the technology?

Spinal Implant – Unrolling

Response: Our minimally invasive spinal cord stimulator is an ultra thin implant that can be inserted into the epidural space within the spinal column through a needle. Once in place, the device can be expanded in a controlled way to cover a large area along the spinal cord.  Covering a large area allows for more precise targeting of the nerves that cause you to feel pain.

PainRelief.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this work?

Response: We believe that this technology could vastly expand the use of spinal cord stimulation for patients with chronic pain conditions.  We are currently fundraising to conduct further pre-clinical testing with an aim to be ready for clinical testing within 3 years.

Any disclosures? The main authors of this study are co-inventors on a related patent application.

Citation:

Electronics with shape actuation for minimally invasive spinal cord stimulation

BY BEN J. WOODINGTON, VINCENZO F. CURTO, YI-LIN YU, HÉCTOR MARTÍNEZ-DOMÍNGUEZ, LAWRENCE COLES, GEORGE G. MALLIARAS, CHRISTOPHER M. PROCTOR, DAMIANO G. BARONE

SCIENCE ADVANCES 25 JUN 2021 : EABG7833

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