Outcome measures for adherence to home exercises among patients with chronic low back pain: a systematic review.
Hironobu Uzawa, Sally Davis
PMID 29706724WHAT IT FOUND
Most home-exercise adherence measures for chronic low back pain were patient diaries or questionnaires, and the review found no evidence that they were trustworthy.
Only the Treatment Self-Regulation Questionnaire was mentioned as having some support, but it was not clear what kind of support.
Key findings
01The review included 8 articles. The included studies measured adherence as frequency of home exercises, except the study that used the Treatment Self-Regulation Questionnaire.
02No included study except the Treatment Self-Regulation Questionnaire study discussed whether the adherence measures were accurate or stable.
03The Treatment Self-Regulation Questionnaire was described as having good support, but the review did not state which kinds of support had been shown.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
Study selection and data extraction were done mainly by one author, which can introduce errors. Only English articles were searched, so relevant measures or validation work in other languages may have been missed. The review did not combine results statistically and did not test which measure best predicts outcomes; it only reported whether studies discussed measure accuracy. The review did not report how many patients were studied or how accurate any measure was in practice.
Declared interests
The authors reported no funding and no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that patient diaries or questionnaires are proven ways to measure home-exercise adherence. This review found no reported accuracy or stability for those measures, and the one questionnaire with some mentioned support was not clearly proven as an adherence outcome.