Most of the outcome question naires had a mixed content reflecting various constructs such as pain and symptoms , sleep disturbances , psychological dysfunctions , physical impairments , and social functions .
STUDY DESIGN A systematic literature review of outcome question naires design ed for assessing functional status or disability in patients with low back pain .
OBJECTIVES To provide a comprehensive overview of all functioning/disability question naires used in recent years and to explore how the main concept(s ) was described or defined in the original paper , the content or the domains of disability , and the measurement properties of the question naires .
SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA A number of clinical tools design ed for evaluating the functional status of patients with low back pain have been developed .
Only a few have been review ed earlier , and there has been little focus on the content reflected in the question naires .
A unidimensional pain/disability measure for low-back pain syndromes
Abstract A new measure is presented , suitable for documenting severity and response to treatment in chronic low‐back pain syndromes . It is self‐administered and combines two pain and seven mobility items . These were selected from pre‐existing vali date d instruments on the basis of their sensitivity to change after treatment . Their Italian vali date d translation was adopted . The measure was administered to 32 chronic low‐back pain Italian patients , all refractory to previous conservative treatments . In most cases they presented with herniation or protrusion of 1–3 lumbar discs . Patients were treated with 3–6 sessions of autotraction over a 5‐ to 15‐day period . Scores on the scale were recorded at admission , discharge and follow‐up , 1–3 months after treatment . At discharge and at follow‐up , patients were asked if , overall , they felt improved , the same or worse . At follow‐up , 20 patients out of 32 reported overall improvement . Scalometric properties of the measure were tested using Rasch analysis . For admission and follow‐up , items followed a consistent hierarchical relationship along a unidimensional pain/disability variable , which is being called back illness . The items were not redundant , in that they spread well along a wide range of difficulty/severity . The hierarchy matched well with the expected expression of the conditions of the patients . A study was conducted on 34 chronic back pain patients , showing satisfactory test‐retest reliability . Depending on the various items , Cohen 's unweighted K ranged from 0.27 to 0.78 , with ten of the 11 items above the 0.45 level of acceptability , while intraclass correlation coefficients ranged from 0.42 to 0.89 . At follow‐up , changes in BACKILL of plus 15 % or more , with respect to admission , were consistent with patients ' reports of improvement in 19 out of 20 cases . Changes in BACKILL of less than 15 % were consistent with patients reports of being the same or worse in 11 out of 12 cases
Most of the outcome question naires had a mixed content reflecting various constructs such as pain and symptoms , sleep disturbances , psychological dysfunctions , physical impairments , and social functions .
STUDY DESIGN A systematic literature review of outcome question naires design ed for assessing functional status or disability in patients with low back pain .
OBJECTIVES To provide a comprehensive overview of all functioning/disability question naires used in recent years and to explore how the main concept(s ) was described or defined in the original paper , the content or the domains of disability , and the measurement properties of the question naires .
SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA A number of clinical tools design ed for evaluating the functional status of patients with low back pain have been developed .
Only a few have been review ed earlier , and there has been little focus on the content reflected in the question naires .