Motor control exercise and patient education program for low resource rural community dwelling adults with chronic low back pain: a pilot randomized clinical trial

This pilot randomized clinical trial assessed the feasibility of implementing motor control exercise (MCE) and patient education (PE) program for the management of chronic low back pain (CLBP) in a low resource rural Nigerian community. Thirty patients with CLBP were recruited and randomly assigned to MCE, PE, or MCE plus PE groups. The MCE program was provided twice a week while the PE program was provided once a week all for 6 weeks. Feasibility was assessed through recruitment rate, treatment compliance, retention/dropout rate, report of adverse events, perceived helpfulness, overall satisfaction, and clinical outcome of pain (numeric pain rating scale) and functional disability (Oswestry Disability Index). Many patients were willing to participate in the study and the recruitment rate was 77%. Treatment compliance in all the three groups were >65% for supervised treatment sessions and <50% for prescribed home program. Retention rate was high and greater overall satisfaction with the interventions was reported. Compared with the baseline, all the three groups improved significantly in pain and disability (P<0.05) after 6 weeks. Pairwise comparison revealed that the MCE plus PE group was superior to the PE group for pain and to the MCE for disability (P<0.05), with large effect size. It was concluded that the designed interventions are promising and conducting a full-scale randomized clinical trial in the future is feasible to confirm the effectiveness of the interventions for the management CLBP in rural Nigeria. (Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03398174)