Comparison of pain, disorder, back performance, and psychological factors in patients with low back pain and radicular pain.
Seunghwan Kim, Jung Hyun Kim, You Lim Kim and 1 others
PMID 29410582WHAT IT FOUND
Patients with low back pain plus pain into the buttocks or legs had worse pain and disability, poorer trunk performance, lower self-efficacy, more fear-avoidance, and more depression than those with low back pain only.
Key findings
01Patients with low back pain plus pain into the buttocks or legs had higher pain, disability, fear-avoidance, and depression scores, and lower self-efficacy scores, than patients with low back pain only.
02Back performance scores were higher in the radicular pain group than in the local low back pain group (mean 4.35 vs 3.04).
03Fear-avoidance-work was correlated with pain, disability, back performance, depression, and self-efficacy in the radicular pain group, but not with disability, back performance, self-efficacy-function, or self-efficacy-symptom in the local low back pain group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
This was not a treatment study, so it cannot show that any therapy reduced pain, disability, or psychological factors. It compared only patients who already had low back pain, so it cannot say how much radicular pain worsens outcomes relative to people without low back pain. The groups were not identical in symptom duration, and the paper did not report adjusting for this or other baseline differences. The paper did not describe blinding of patients or therapists, and several outcomes were self-reported. The study was done in two hospitals and used Korean reliability data for one questionnaire, so it may not apply to all settings.
Declared interests
The paper states it was supported by the Academic Research Fund of Dr. Myung Ki (MIKE) Hong.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the group differences as proof that radicular pain causes worse pain, disability, performance, or psychological factors. The study compared patients at one time and did not assign or follow any treatment.