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Low back pain patients in Sweden, Denmark and the UK share similar characteristics and outcomes: a cross-national comparison of prospective cohort studies

BACKGROUND: Low back pain (LBP) is the world’s leading cause of disability and yet poorly understood. Cross-national comparisons may motivate hypotheses about outcomes being condition-specific or related to cultural differences and can inform whether observations from one country may be generalised...

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Autores principales: Kongsted, Alice, Davies, Laura, Axen, Iben
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4661941/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26612459
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12891-015-0824-7
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author Kongsted, Alice
Davies, Laura
Axen, Iben
author_facet Kongsted, Alice
Davies, Laura
Axen, Iben
author_sort Kongsted, Alice
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Low back pain (LBP) is the world’s leading cause of disability and yet poorly understood. Cross-national comparisons may motivate hypotheses about outcomes being condition-specific or related to cultural differences and can inform whether observations from one country may be generalised to another. This analysis of data from three cohort studies explored whether characteristics and outcomes differed between LBP patients visiting chiropractors in Sweden, Denmark and the UK. METHODS: LBP patients completed a baseline questionnaire and were followed up after 3, 5, 12 and 26 weeks. Outcomes were LBP intensity (0–10 scales) and LBP frequency (0–7 days the previous week). Cohort differences were tested in mixed models accounting for repeated measures. It was investigated if any differences were explained by different baseline characteristics, and interaction terms between baseline factors and nations tested if strength of prognostic factors differed across countries. RESULTS: The study sample consisted of 262, 947 and 453 patients from Sweden, Denmark and the UK respectively. Patient characteristics were largely similar across cohorts although some statistically significant differences were observed. The clinical course followed almost identical patterns across nations and small observed differences were not present after adjusting for baseline factors. The associations of LBP intensity and episode duration with outcome differed in strength between countries. CONCLUSIONS: Chiropractic patients with low back pain had similar characteristics and clinical course across three Northern European countries. It is unlikely that culture have substantially different impacts on the course of LBP in these countries and the results support knowledge transfer between the investigated countries.
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spelling pubmed-46619412015-11-28 Low back pain patients in Sweden, Denmark and the UK share similar characteristics and outcomes: a cross-national comparison of prospective cohort studies Kongsted, Alice Davies, Laura Axen, Iben BMC Musculoskelet Disord Research Article BACKGROUND: Low back pain (LBP) is the world’s leading cause of disability and yet poorly understood. Cross-national comparisons may motivate hypotheses about outcomes being condition-specific or related to cultural differences and can inform whether observations from one country may be generalised to another. This analysis of data from three cohort studies explored whether characteristics and outcomes differed between LBP patients visiting chiropractors in Sweden, Denmark and the UK. METHODS: LBP patients completed a baseline questionnaire and were followed up after 3, 5, 12 and 26 weeks. Outcomes were LBP intensity (0–10 scales) and LBP frequency (0–7 days the previous week). Cohort differences were tested in mixed models accounting for repeated measures. It was investigated if any differences were explained by different baseline characteristics, and interaction terms between baseline factors and nations tested if strength of prognostic factors differed across countries. RESULTS: The study sample consisted of 262, 947 and 453 patients from Sweden, Denmark and the UK respectively. Patient characteristics were largely similar across cohorts although some statistically significant differences were observed. The clinical course followed almost identical patterns across nations and small observed differences were not present after adjusting for baseline factors. The associations of LBP intensity and episode duration with outcome differed in strength between countries. CONCLUSIONS: Chiropractic patients with low back pain had similar characteristics and clinical course across three Northern European countries. It is unlikely that culture have substantially different impacts on the course of LBP in these countries and the results support knowledge transfer between the investigated countries. BioMed Central 2015-11-26 /pmc/articles/PMC4661941/ /pubmed/26612459 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12891-015-0824-7 Text en © Kongsted et al. 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Kongsted, Alice
Davies, Laura
Axen, Iben
Low back pain patients in Sweden, Denmark and the UK share similar characteristics and outcomes: a cross-national comparison of prospective cohort studies
title Low back pain patients in Sweden, Denmark and the UK share similar characteristics and outcomes: a cross-national comparison of prospective cohort studies
title_full Low back pain patients in Sweden, Denmark and the UK share similar characteristics and outcomes: a cross-national comparison of prospective cohort studies
title_fullStr Low back pain patients in Sweden, Denmark and the UK share similar characteristics and outcomes: a cross-national comparison of prospective cohort studies
title_full_unstemmed Low back pain patients in Sweden, Denmark and the UK share similar characteristics and outcomes: a cross-national comparison of prospective cohort studies
title_short Low back pain patients in Sweden, Denmark and the UK share similar characteristics and outcomes: a cross-national comparison of prospective cohort studies
title_sort low back pain patients in sweden, denmark and the uk share similar characteristics and outcomes: a cross-national comparison of prospective cohort studies
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4661941/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26612459
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12891-015-0824-7
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