Active clinical trials for "Back Pain"

The investigators hypothesize that a 6-week treatment of non-invasive spinal decompression reduces discogenic low back pain (LBP), increases lumbar disk height, and that an increase in lumbar disc height is associated with decreased LBP.

Back pain is experienced by approximately 80% of the population during their life. However, only a small minority (<1%) will have a medical condition (such as Cauda Equina Syndrome) which requires immediate medical intervention. Currently, it is not known how many people access Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in an attempt to meet their needs for their back pain. The demand on EMS is increasing and many of these patients could be better managed by other services. Additionally, little is known about the characteristics of those accessing EMS due to back pain, or the nature of the contacts regarding issues such as outcome of the patient contact. The aims of this study are: to quantify the prevalence of people contacting EMS via telephone with non-traumatic back pain to describe the characteristics of people calling EMS with non-traumatic back pain to describe key characteristics of the contact between the service user and EMS to compare the call prevalence, patient characteristics and contact characteristics between people with non-traumatic back pain and a group of people for whom EMS contact is recommended as standard, in this case people presenting with cerebrovascular accident (CVA). A secondary aim of the work is to explore what factors might predict patient outcomes such as whether the patient is transported to A/E, whether the patient receives analgesics, and whether the patient is admitted to hospital.

Supported self-management (SM) is one of the key recommendations in management of chronic low back pain (CLBP). SM programmes for patients with CLBP have failed to show clinically meaningful improvement in pain and disability markers, which potentially reflect the lack of treatment matching of SM programmes. Patient selection for a SM programme for patients with CLBP is particularly difficult due to lack of extensive research on what predicts SM and its change. The overarching purpose of this study is to identify predictors of SM and its change over time in patients with CLBP. This study is a prospective non-experimental longitudinal study.

The main objective of this study is to evaluate whether acceptance (measured by the AAQ-II questionnaire) is prognostic of algo-functional changes measured by the Oswestry Disability Index, ODI) at 6 months.

Recent evidence suggests that chronic pain is associated with abnormal connectivity between brain regions associated with the processing of pain. We aim to test the diagnostic power of resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to diagnose patients with chronic back pain. Using new methods of image acquisition and analysis we aim to develop a computational method to correctly classify patients and matched control subjects.

The main objective of this study is to compare on day 0 the maximum Lyapunov exponent (lmax, an indicator of local dynamic stability) of chronic low back pain patients versus that of healthy volunteers matched for age (± 5 years), sex and body mass index (BMI ± 15% of low back pain patients).

Back pain is experienced by approximately 80% of the population during their life. However, only a small minority (<1%) will have a medical condition (such as Cauda Equina Syndrome) which requires immediate medical intervention. Currently, it is not known how many people access Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in an attempt to meet their needs for their back pain. The demand on EMS is increasing and many of these patients could be better managed by other services. Additionally, little is known about the characteristics of those accessing EMS due to back pain, or the nature of the contacts regarding issues such as outcome of the patient contact. The aims of this study are: to quantify the prevalence of people accessing EMS via attendance at an Emergency Department (ED) to describe the characteristics of people attending ED with non-traumatic back pain to describe key characteristics of the contact between the service user and EMS to compare the prevalence of attendance, patient characteristics and contact characteristics between people with non-traumatic back pain and the general population of those attending ED. A secondary aim of the work is to explore what factors might predict patient outcomes such as whether the patient self presents or is referred to ED by another service, whether the patient receives analgesics, whether the patient receives a diagnostic scan and whether the patient is admitted to hospital.

Post Dural Puncture Headache (PDPH) causes significant short-term disability, prevents mobilisation, affects childcare activities and results in prolonged hospital stay. Initial treatment involves painkillers and if patient fails to respond, an Epidural Blood Patch (EBP). EBP involves taking patient's blood and injecting into the epidural space. It is generally agreed that PDPH is a self-limiting condition and resolves in two weeks. However there is emerging evidence that patients with PDPH could be at an increased risk of developing longstanding (chronic) headaches. Retrospective case studies show that between 28 - 34% of patients who developed PDPH had longstanding headaches at 18 months after the insertion of the epidural. There is also recent evidence of new onset low back pain developing in patients who have received an epidural blood patch that was performed to treat PDPH. Nearly two thirds of patients from a hospital in UK had new onset low back pain after they had received epidural blood patch treatment. Presently, there is no prospective clinical study evaluating the development of longstanding headaches and new onset low back pain after the development of PDPH. Aim of the present study is to evaluate the incidence of longstanding headache after accidental dural (ADP) puncture and the incidence of new onset low back pain after epidural blood patch treatment.

This project aims to elucidate neural correlates of proprioceptive deficits in patients with recurrent non-specific low back pain, by studying whether brain activation patterns during the processing of proprioceptive signals from the ankle muscles and lower back muscles are altered compared to healthy control subjects.

This study aims at translating, cross culturally adapting and establishing the psychometric properties of the The Core Outcome Measure Index (COMI) for patients with low back pain (LBP) in Egypt. This study will be conducted at the outpatient clinic of public hospitals in Egypt. This study will be divided into two main stages: (1) Translation and cross culture adaptation, and (2) Validation. In the translation and cross culture adaptation stage, the original English version will be translated into modern Arabic following the guidelines described by Beaton et al. (2000). Then, the translated final version will be tested on a sample of 30-40 participants in a small pilot study to ensure linguistic clarity. For the validation stage, 100 male and female adults with LBP will be recruited from public physiotherapy outpatient clinics. Eligible patients will be asked to complete a questionnaire booklet containing The Arabic versions of Oswestry Disability index (ODI), Ronald Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ), Short-form 36 (SF-36) and the Visual analogy scale (VAS). Further, disability and function will be assessed by Timed Up and Go test (TUG), 50 feet walking and loaded reach test. Outcome measures will include: Face validity which will be evaluated subjectively based on judgment of expert committee and patients' feedback. Concurrent validity is assessed by testing correlation between the COMI and VAS, ODI, RMDQ and SF-36 Construct validity will be assessed by testing the correlation between the scores for each item of the COMI and its corresponding valid back specific full-length questionnaire including the ODI, RMDQ, SF-36 and VAS. All testing procedure will be repeated after seven days for testing reliability.