Health maintenance care in work-related low back pain and its association with disability recurrence
Manuel Cifuentes1, Joanna Willetts, Radoslaw Wasiak
1Center for Disability Research at the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton, MA, USA. Manuel.Cifuentes@LibertyMutual.com
Objectives:
To compare occurrence of repeated disability episodes across types of health care providers who treat claimants with new episodes of work-related low back pain (LBP).
Method:
A total of 894 cases followed 1 year using workers' compensation claims data. Provider types were defined for the initial episode of disability and subsequent episode of health maintenance care.
Results:
Controlling for demographics and severity, the hazard ratio [HR] of disability recurrence for patients of physical therapists (HR = 2.0; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.0 to 3.9) or physicians (HR = 1.6; 95% CI = 0.9 to 6.2) was higher than that of chiropractor (referent, HR = 1.0), which was similar to that of the patients non-treated after return to work (HR = 1.2; 95% CI = 0.4 to 3.8).
Conclusions:
In work-related nonspecific LBP, the use of health maintenance care provided by physical therapist or physician services was associated with a higher disability recurrence than in chiropractic services or no treatment.
Related Concept Videos
01:17Classification of Illness
An illness is a response to a disease in which the person's level of functioning is changed compared with a previous level. The general classification of illness includes acute and chronic.
Acute illness is severe and...
01:29Herniated Intervertebral Disc l: Introduction