Do health care providers' attitudes towards back pain predict their treatment recommendations? Differential predictive validity of implicit and explicit attitude measures.

The current study aimed to measure the differential predictive value of implicit and explicit attitude measures on treatment behaviour of health care providers. Thirty-six physiotherapy students completed a measure of explicit treatment attitude (Pain Attitudes And Beliefs Scale For Physiotherapists-PABS-PT) and a measure of implicit treatment attitude (Extrinsic Affective Simon Task-EAST). Furthermore, they gave treatment recommendations for a patient simulating back pain on three video scenes. The implicit and explicit measures of attitudes were only weakly related to each other. However, both were differentially related to treatment recommendations. The implications of the differential predictive value of implicit and explicit attitude measures for treatment behaviour are discussed.

Effectiveness of behavioral graded activity after first-time lumbar disc surgery: short term results of a randomized controlled trial.

Behavioral approaches to treating patients following lumbar disc surgery are becoming increasingly popular. The treatment method is based on the assumption that pain and pain disability are not only influenced by somatic pathology, if found, but also by psychological and social factors. A recent study highlighted the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral interventions, as compared to no treatment, for chronic low back patients. However, to the authors' knowledge, there is no randomized controlled trial that evaluates a behavioral program for patients following lumbar disc surgery. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a behavioral graded activity (BGA) program compared to usual care (UC) in physiotherapy following first-time lumbar disc surgery. The BGA program was a patient-tailored intervention based upon operant therapy. The essence of the BGA is to teach patients that it is safe to increase activity levels. The study was designed as a randomized controlled trial. Assessments were carried out before and after treatment by an observer blinded to treatment allocation. Patients suffering residual symptoms restricting their activities of daily living and/or work at the 6 weeks post-surgery consultation by the neurosurgeon were included. The exclusion criteria were: complications during surgery, any relevant underlying pathology, and any contraindication to physiotherapy or the BGA program. Primary outcome measures were the patient's Global Perceived Effect and the functional status. Secondary measures were: fear of movement, viewing pain as extremely threatening, pain, severity of the main complaint, range of motion, and relapses. Physiotherapists in the BGA group received proper training. Between November 1997 and December 1999, 105 patients were randomized; 53 into the UC group and 52 into the BGA group. The unadjusted analysis shows a 19.3% (95% CI: 0.1 to 38.5) statistically significant difference to the advantage of the UC group on Global Perceived Effect. This result, however, is not robust, as the adjusted analyses reveal a difference of 15.7% (95% CI: -3.9 to 35.2), which is not statistically significant. For all other outcome measures there were no statistically significant or clinically relevant differences between the two intervention groups. In general, the physiotherapists' compliance with the BGA program was satisfactory, although not all treatments, either in the BGA or the UC group, were delivered exactly as planned, resulting in less contrast between the two interventions than had been planned for. There was one re-operation in each group. The BGA program was not more effective than UC in patients following first-time lumbar disc surgery. For Global Perceived Effect there was a borderline statistically significant difference to the advantage of the UC group. On functional status and all other outcome measures there were no relevant differences between interventions. The number of re-operations was negligible, indicating that it is safe to exercise after first-time disc surgery.

Readiness to adopt the self-management approach to cope with chronic pain in fibromyalgic patients.

The effectiveness of cognitive-behavior therapy aimed at helping patients with the acquisition of self-management skills to cope with pain, is thought to depend partly on the patients' willingness to adopt a self-management approach. Some patients may not believe that self-management will be helpful while others have decided to adopt it and others already apply the self-management skills in their daily lives. The present study explored the concept of 'Readiness to change' in a population of Dutch fibromyalgic patients. A self-report questionnaire was completed by 321 patients. Factor analysis revealed three scales, each assessing the characteristic of one stage of readiness to change, the Precontemplation, Contemplation and Action scale. Firstly, the reliabilities of these scales were 0.61, 0.86 and 0.61, respectively, and only the latter two scales correlated significantly (r=0.14). Secondly, the scales were validated using subscales from the Multidimensional Pain Inventory, beliefs on the credibility of the self-management approach and subscales from the Illness Perception Questionnaire. These subscales explained 5, 22 and 8% of the variance of the scores on the Precontemplation, Contemplation and the Action scales, respectively. Thirdly, on the basis of the three scale scores, over 80% of the fibromialgia patients could be classified into one of five potentially psychological relevant subgroups: Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action and Relapse. The data suggest that improvements in operationalizations of the Precontemplation and Action dimensions of readiness to change are needed and that the theoretical foundation of readiness to change needs further development.

The cost diary: a method to measure direct and indirect costs in cost-effectiveness research.

From a societal perspective long-term clinical trials or follow-up studies should preferably not only include an evaluation of the health effect for the patient, but also an economic evaluation. In order to yield comprehensive medical and nonmedical resource use data, we at least partly depend on respondents' recall for collecting these costing data. A patient cost diary was developed in order to estimate total resource use, expenses, and lost production due to illness and treatment. We applied the cost diary in two randomized clinical trials evaluating the cost-effectiveness of behavioral rehabilitation in 205 fibromyalgia and chronic low back pain patients. The use of the diary was evaluated, studying the feasibility, the influence of the period of data collection on the results, and some aspects of validity. Eighty-five percent of the patients completed at least one diary and in total 68% of the diaries were returned. Although the results for the three alternative periods of data collection (keeping the diary 1 week every month, 2 weeks every 2 months, or a full year) were not significantly different, they were only moderately correlated. Finally, self-reported specialist care contacts were generally in agreement with data from an insurance company. However, for physiotherapy contacts there were differences between the self-reported and insurance data. This study shows how the cost diary might be used successfully in cost-effectiveness studies.

Behavioral-graded activity compared with usual care after first-time disk surgery: considerations of the design of a randomized clinical trial.

OBJECTIVE: To present the design of a trial on the effectiveness of a behavioral-graded activity model. DESIGN: Randomized clinical trial. PATIENTS: Patients undergoing first-time lumbar disk surgery who still have low-back pain at the 6-week neurosurgical consultation. INTERVENTIONS: A patient-tailored behavioral-graded activity program that is based on operant therapy. The key elements of this program are baseline measurements, goal-setting, and time-contingency. This program is compared with usual care in physiotherapy, which is pain-contingent. OUTCOME MEASURES: Primary measures are the patient's global impression of the effect and their functional status. Secondary measures are kinesiophobia, catastrophizing, pain, main complaint, range of motion, and relapses. The direct and indirect costs will also be assessed. The effect measures are rated before randomization and 3, 6, and 12 months later. DISCUSSION: Several trials have been conducted on the effectiveness of behavioral treatments. Subjects were always patients with chronic low-back pain. In this trial, we apply such a treatment in patients after first-time disk surgery in a primary care setting.

Patient utilities in chronic musculoskeletal pain: how useful is the standard gamble method?

The main goal of current pain management approaches is to increase the patients' quality of life by improving pain coping skills and by reducing the levels of disability in daily life, often despite persistent pain. Direct measurement of quality of life is of crucial importance in economic evaluation research, in which not only is the estimation of financial costs and benefits included, but so is the evaluation of costs and benefits in terms of changes in health states. The purpose of this study is to compare the psychometric qualities of two instruments for assessing patients' utilities, the rating scale (RS) and the standard gamble (SG). Such instruments are designed for their application in economic evaluation research, but have seldomly been used in chronic pain trials. Both methods provide a single measure between 0 and 1. The relationship between these utility measures and descriptive and domain-specific quality of life measures was examined in 133 fibromyalgia patients and 148 patients with chronic non-specific low back pain. Mean utility score at baseline was 0.43 with the RS and 0.78 for the SG. The correlation between both methods was found to be poor (r = 0.21). Both measures appeared to be fairly stable in a 2-week test-retest period (intra class correlation coefficient (ICC) = 0.74 and 0.77). Scores on the description of patient's own health on six domains, global assessment of change and domain specific measures correlated moderately with the RS scores and low with the SG. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that 32% of the variance in RS values and only 13% of the variance in SG utilities could be explained by domain-specific measures. These results suggest an acceptable construct validity for the RS but insufficient construct validity for the SG. Valuations of ones own health appear only partially to be related to the assessment of the pain-specific measures and measures of distress. It can be concluded that the RS and domain-specific measures assess partly different, but nevertheless complementary aspects of health-related quality of life. It is therefore recommended to include in economic evaluation studies both domain-specific measures and valuation measures. Finally, in chronic musculoskeletal pain patients, RS scores were found to be more responsive in detecting significant changes in preferences than SG scores. For use in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain, the RS is preferred to the SG for establishing accurate decisions about the impact of new interventions on their health outcomes.

Cognitive-educational treatment of fibromyalgia: a randomized clinical trial. I. Clinical effects.

OBJECTIVE: This randomized controlled clinical trial evaluates the effectiveness of outpatient group cognitive/educational treatment for patients with the fibromyalgia (FM) syndrome. We hypothesized that the combination of group education with cognitive treatment aimed at developing pain coping skills would be more effective than group education alone. METHODS: 131 patients with FM were randomly assigned to 3 conditions: an experimental condition, which was the combined cognitive/educational intervention (ECO); an attention control condition consisting of group education plus group discussion (EDI); and a waiting list control (WLC). For the treatment conditions ECO and EDI, assessments were made 2 weeks before treatment, at start of treatment, at post-treatment, and at 6 and 12 mo followup. WLC patients received only 3 assessments. RESULTS: There were no pretreatment differences between the groups, or between dropouts and patients who remained in the study. At post-treatment, and compared with the WLC, the ECO patients improved in knowledge about FM (p = 0.007) and pain coping (p < 0.001). EDI patients improved on pain coping (p = 0.005) and pain control (p = 0.002). EDI patients reported significantly less fear than ECO patients (p = 0.005). There were no other differential effects between ECO and EDI at post-treatment or 6 mo or 12 mo followup. Based on the reliability of change index for clinical significance, the relative short term success rates are 6.4 and 18.4% for ECO and EDI, respectively. CONCLUSION: The surplus value of a highly structured, 12 session group cognitive treatment added to group education cannot be supported by our study. In EDI, fear reduction might have enhanced pain coping and pain control, while poor compliance, the difficulty of homework assignments, and lack of individual support may have limited the effectiveness of ECO.

Cognitive-educational treatment of fibromyalgia: a randomized clinical trial. II. Economic evaluation.

OBJECTIVE: In this 3 year randomized clinical trial the cost effectiveness of a 6 week educational/cognitive intervention (ECO) is compared with an educational discussion intervention (EDI) and a waiting list condition (WLC). METHODS: A total of 131 patients with fibromyalgia were randomly allocated to the ECO, EDI, or WLC intervention. The ECO and EDI groups were followed for 12 months, whereas the WLC group was followed for 6 weeks. Direct health care and nonhealth care costs, and the indirect costs associated with lost production due to illness, were calculated. The effects were measured in terms of utilities, using rating scale and standard gamble methods. RESULTS: Treatment costs were estimated to be US $980 per patient for both ECO and EDI. The total direct health care costs of ECO treatment were US $1623 higher than those for EDI. This difference was significant. Indirect costs for the 2 groups were not significantly different. At 6 weeks there was a significant difference in rating scale utilities between the 3 groups, caused by a significantly greater improvement in the EDI group compared to the WLC group. However, no significant differences in either rating scale or standard gamble utilities were found between the ECO and EDI groups immediately after treatment, or at the 6 or 12 month followups. CONCLUSION: The economic evaluation showed that the addition of a cognitive component to the educational intervention led to significantly higher health care costs and no additional improvement in quality of life compared to the educational intervention alone. This conclusion is robust through a range of plausible values used in a sensitivity analysis.

What do chronic pain patients think of their pain? Towards a pain cognition questionnaire.

The three-systems model of chronic pain emphasizes the partially independent relationship among physiological, gross motor and verbal-cognitive responses of chronic pain patients. This study describes the development of an assessment instrument representing a measure for the verbal-cognitive response system of chronic pain. Fifty items, each of which is assigned to one of five factors (pain impact, catastrophizing, outcome efficacy, acquiescence and reliance on health care) constitute the new Pain Cognition List (PCL). The PCL was developed using a Dutch back pain population and proves to be stable across sex and back pain diagnosis. By means of three experiments the PCL is shown to be reliable and sufficiently valid. The PCL might be a promising tool for identifying pain patients whose pain problem is mainly controlled by cognitive factors.

A behavioral treatment for sitting and standing intolerance in a patient with chronic low back pain.

This study reports on the effectiveness of an individualized shaping treatment program for sitting and standing intolerance in a patient with chronic low back pain following a laminectomy for removal of an intradural tumor. Functional assessment of sitting and standing tolerance, observation of pain behaviors, and a self-report measure regarding the pain experience were carried out during baseline, treatment, posttreatment, and at a 6-month follow-up. By the end of the 6-week inpatient treatment, the patient was able to stand still for 25 min and to sit for 15 min. The overall pain behavior diminished significantly. These findings underscore the importance of relatively simple and cost-effective individualized behavioral programs for chronic pain patients.