Evidence for managing chronic low back pain in primary care: a review of recommendations from high-quality clinical practice guidelines

Abstract

Aim

Chronic low back pain represents a major problem throughout the world which is increasing largely because of the aging world population. Clinical practice Guidelines can be powerful tools for promoting evidence-based practice, as they integrate research findings in order to support decision making. This study aimed to review recommendations for the management of Chronic low Back Pain in primary care based on high-quality recent and recently updated Clinical practice Guidelines.

Methods

CINHAL, PubMed, EMBASE, PEDro, Google Scholar, Government websites, Scientific Association websites were searched until April 2019. The retrieved documents underwent several consecutive selection steps: semi-automated duplicate screening, documents selection based on title and abstract screening. Finally, three independent investigators screened the documents for the selected inclusion criteria and reviewed the retrieved documents by means of the AGREE II instrument.

Results

A total of 3055 records were retrieved, of which 10 Clinical practice Guidelines met the inclusion criteria. The overall quality of these Clinical practice Guidelines was moderately variable. The recommendations of four Clinical practice Guidelines deemed as “excellent” were extracted and summarized. Although we tried to implement the most comprehensive research strategies, some Clinical practice Guidelines may be missing due to publication bias or incomplete indexing.

Conclusions

This study showed a partial progress in respect of the methodological quality of the Clinical practice Guidelines. Several AGREE II domains demonstrated low scores, particularly the “applicability” and “monitoring and auditing criteria” are the domains most susceptible to amendments in future.

Implications for rehabilitation

• Clinicians should be aware that among recently published/updated clinical practice guidelines for the management of chronic low back pain in primary care only few were deemed to have high quality.

• Increasing evidence suggests the efficacy for self-management to improve low back pain outcome.

• Physical treatments are recommended in order to improve low back pain outcome while many physical modalities such as TENS, ultrasound, laser therapy are not.

• Psychological treatments are recommended and should be included as part of a broader treatment plan.

Keywords:

• Low back pain
• practice guideline
• rehabilitation
• primary health care
• chronic pain
• disability evaluation

Acknowledgements

The authors are willing to acknowledge Carla Naletto for the help received during the assessment of the German documents.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no declarations of interest.