• Eur J Pain · Jan 2010

    Comparative Study

    Subgrouping low back pain: a comparison of the STarT Back Tool with the Orebro Musculoskeletal Pain Screening Questionnaire.

    • Jonathan C Hill, Kate M Dunn, Chris J Main, and Elaine M Hay.
    • Arthritis Research Campaign National Primary Care Centre, Primary Care Sciences, Keele University, Staffordshire, United Kingdom. j.hill@cphc.keele.ac.uk
    • Eur J Pain. 2010 Jan 1; 14 (1): 83-9.

    IntroductionClinicians require brief, practical tools to help identify low back pain (LBP) subgroups requiring early, targeted secondary prevention. The STarT Back Tool (SBT) was recently validated to subgroup LBP patients into early treatment pathways.AimTo test the SBT's concurrent validity against an existing, popular LBP subgrouping tool, the Orebro Musculoskeletal Pain Screening Questionnaire (OMPSQ), and to compare the clinical characteristics of subgroups identified by each tool.MethodsTwo hundred and forty-four consecutive 'non-specific' LBP consulters at 8 UK GP practices aged 18-59years were invited to complete a questionnaire. Measures included the OMPSQ and SBT, disability, fear, catastrophising, pain intensity, episode duration and demographics. Instruments were compared using Spearman's correlations, tests for subgroup agreement and discriminant analysis of subgroup characteristics according to reference standards.ResultsCompleted SBT (9-items) and OMPSQ (24-items) data was available for 130/244 patients (53%). The correlation of SBT and OMPSQ scores was 'excellent (rs=0.80). Subgroup characteristics were similar across the low, medium and high subgroups, but, the proportions allocated to 'low', 'medium' and 'high' risk groups were different, with fewer patients in the SBT's high risk group. Both instruments similarly discriminated for reference standards such as disability, catastrophising, fear, comorbid pain and time off work. The OMPSQ was better at discriminating pain intensity, while the SBT was better for discriminating bothersomeness of back pain and referred leg pain.ConclusionsThe SBT baseline psychometrics performed similarly to the OMPSQ, but the SBT is shorter and easier to score and is an appropriate alternative for identifying high risk LBP patients in primary care.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…