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Management of non-specific low back pain in primary care – A systematic overview of recommendations from international evidence-based guidelines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2020

Cornelia Krenn*
Affiliation:
Institute of General Practice and Evidence-based Health Services Research, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
Karl Horvath
Affiliation:
Institute of General Practice and Evidence-based Health Services Research, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria Division of Endocrinology and Diabetology, Department of Internal Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
Klaus Jeitler
Affiliation:
Institute of General Practice and Evidence-based Health Services Research, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Documentation, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
Carolin Zipp
Affiliation:
Institute of General Practice and Evidence-based Health Services Research, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
Andrea Siebenhofer-Kroitzsch
Affiliation:
Institute of General Practice and Evidence-based Health Services Research, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria Chronic Care and Health Services Research, Head of Working Group for Chronic Care and Health Services Research, Institute of General Practice, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Germany
Thomas Semlitsch
Affiliation:
Institute of General Practice and Evidence-based Health Services Research, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
*
Author for correspondence: Cornelia Krenn, Research Scientist, Institute of General Practice and Evidence-based Health Services Research, Medical University of Graz, Auenbruggerplatz 2/9, 8036 Graz, Austria. Email: cornelia.krenn@medunigraz.at
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Abstract

Aim:

Systematic identification, characterization and analysis of recommendations concerning the diagnosis and treatment of non-specific low back pain (LBP) in primary care provided in international evidence-based guidelines from high-income countries.

Background:

LBP is one of the most common reasons for consulting a primary care physician and its prevalence is higher in high-income than in middle- or low-income countries. The majority of LBP is non-specific and treatment recommendations are not often based on high-quality and patient-oriented evidence.

Methods:

We systematically searched PubMed and major guideline databases from 2013 to 2020. Two independent reviewers performed literature selection and the quality assessment of included guidelines using the AGREE II tool. We extracted all relevant recommendations including the corresponding Grade of Recommendation. We grouped all included recommendations by topic and compared them to each other.

Findings:

This overview includes 10 current guidelines and overall 549 relevant recommendations. Recommendations covered aspects of assessment and diagnosis (15%), non-pharmacological interventions (46%), pharmacological interventions (26%), invasive treatments (8%) and multimodal pain management (5%). In total, 30% of all recommendations were strong and 57% weak or very weak. The proportion of recommendations for and against an intervention was 45% and 38%, respectively. The recommendations from the different guidelines were largely in good agreement. We identify only a small number of contradictory recommendations, mostly dealing with very specific interventions.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, current evidence-based guidelines published in high-income countries provide recommendations for all major aspects of the management of people with LBP in primary care. Recommendations from different guidelines were largely consistent. More than 50% of these recommendations were weak or very weak and a high proportion of recommendation advised against an intervention.

Information

Type
Research
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020
Figure 0

Figure 1. Flow chart of guideline selection process.

Figure 1

Table 1. Characteristics of included guidelines

Figure 2

Table 2. Methodological quality of the included guidelines (AGREE II scores)

Figure 3

Table 3. Summary and comparison of the strength and direction of all identified recommendations categorized by topic

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