physiobackEarly physical therapy for recent-onset low back pain resulted in statistically significant improvement in disability compared to usual care, but the improvement was modest and did not achieve a difference considered clinically important at the individual patient level, according to a study in the October 13 issue of JAMA.Julie M. Fritz, Ph.D., P.T., of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and colleagues randomly assigned 220 patients with recent-onset LBP to early physical therapy (n = 108; consisted of 4 physical therapy sessions [manipulation and exercise]), or usual care (n = 112; no additional interventions during the first 4 weeks). All participants received back pain related education. One-year follow-up was completed by 207 participants (94 percent).
For the primary study outcome, early physical therapy showed improvement compared to usual care on a measure of disability after 3 months. A significant difference was not found for disability between groups at 1-year follow-up. There was no improvement in pain intensity at 4-week, 3-month, or 1-year follow-up. Most differences between groups were modest. There were no differences in health care utilization at any point.
“We found that patients in both groups improved rapidly. Rapid and substantial improvement by most patients with acute LBP limits treatment effects in early intervention studies. We detected a modest difference favoring early physical therapy that was better than the natural history of acute LBP for the primary outcome at 3-month follow-up. However, the between-group difference did not achieve the threshold for minimum clinically important difference. Furthermore, differences were mostly undetectable by 1 year,” the authors write.

Source Newsroom: JAMA – Journal of the American Medical Association
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