[Outpatient multimodal pain therapy : Results of a 1-week intensive outpatient multimodal group program for patients with chronic unspecific back pain - retrospective evaluation after 3 and 12 months]

Abstract

Background: Interdisciplinary pain therapy is nowadays the state of the art for the treatment of chronic unspecific back pain. The aim of this article is to present the retrospective analysis of the data from a 1-week intensive outpatient multimodal interdisciplinary pain therapy group program for treatment of patients with chronic unspecific back pain.

Design and methods: The questionnaire-based data from patients who attended the program were evaluated before as well as 3 and 12 months after finishing the program. The patients were questioned regarding parameters, such as pain severity, quality of life, pain-related disability, depression and pain acceptance.

Results: On average a significant improvement of all parameters after 3 and 12 months could be demonstrated (excluding the domains "social" and "environment" in the context of quality of life).

Discussion: Interestingly, the results showed a significant improvement of almost all evaluated parameters even after a period of 12 months (unfortunately only data for 41 patients were available). In our opinion this improvement is due to the special constellation of the presented program, which with 1 week is relatively short but very intensive with 34 h of treatment. In addition, the program is integrated into a long-term multimodal outpatient treatment, a concept in which the multimodal treatment is individually continued after the 1‑week program. On the other hand, the results especially after 12 months have to be interpreted particularly in this context.

Keywords: Chronic back pain; Group therapy; Interdisciplinary pain therapy; Outcome; Outpatient therapy.