The effect of order of testing in functional performance in persons with and without chronic back pain

Batteries of individually standardized physical and functional tests are commonly used to assess persons with chronic back pain disability. The order of testing may affect performance on later tests. One hundred and fifty patients with > 3 months of back pain disability underwent a multidisciplinary Spine Team Assessment involving Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Pain Psychology, and Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor assessments at a university spine clinic. Seventeen back healthy volunteers performed the physical component of the assessment. For the volunteers the order of testing was randomized to OT tests first or PT test first, with 0.5 h rest between the tests. For patients the order of testing was arbitrarily set by an alternating schedule, with 1 h psychological testing between the two components. For both the patients and volunteers, among the 14 test components, there was no significant difference (p > 0.05) in performance with order of testing. This held true for the subgroup of patients who put out good cardiac effort. Volunteers performed better than patients on all individual tests (p < 0.001). Results suggest that the order of physical testing during a Spine Team Assessment does not affect test performance either in chronic low back disabled patients or in volunteers.