Keele researchers launch major back pain study
Researchers at the University of Keele are setting up a major clinical study in a bid to improve treatment of low back pain, which affects millions of people in the UK every year.
Around 1,000 people from north Staffordshire and Cheshire will be recruited onto the five-year study, which is being funded by a grant of £384,000 from the Arthritis Research Campaign (arc).
More than two and a half million people saw their GP with back pain in 2000, but 90 per cent of patients never have the cause of their pain accurately diagnosed. Back pain represents a major drain on the country's economy, accounting for 108 million lost working days; more than £9bn in lost production.
Now the team at Keele's Primary Care Sciences Research Centre are hoping to devise more effective, better-targeted care packages for back pain patients to speed up their recovery and get them back to work again. They plan to train nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists in pain management to work with GPs in north Staffs and Cheshire.
An important part of their work will be to emphasise the importance of exercise and self-management, and to challenge the commonly held misconception held by many GPs and patients that resting will solve back pain. In fact, resting makes back pain worse.
"GPs will recruit patients and screen out those patients with serious back problems who need to be treated in hospital or require surgery," explained Elaine Hay, Professor of Community Rheumatology at Keele, and consultant rheumatologist at the Heywood Hospital in Stoke on Trent.
"We will then identify those patients at the highest risk of back pain persisting or reccurring, and help to reduce that risk. The difference between this and other studies we have done is that we hope to target treatment more effectively."
Those at high risk often have psychological as well as physical symptoms; for example, they may are anxious or depressed about their condition, concerned that their back pain will prevent them going back to work, and afraid that exercise will make it worse.
These patients will be given an intensive, ongoing package of care of exercises, activity and advice about returning to work and coping with pain. Other back pain sufferers, who are not considered as such high risk, will be offered a less intensive care package, which includes exercise and physiotherapy.
