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. 2023 Apr 23;20(9):5611.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph20095611.

Management of Low Back Pain: Do Physiotherapists Know the Evidence-Based Guidelines?

Antoine Fourré  1   2 , Rob Vanderstraeten  2 , Laurence Ris  1 , Hilde Bastiaens  2 , Jozef Michielsen  2   3 , Christophe Demoulin  4 , Ben Darlow  5 , Nathalie Roussel  2
Affiliations

Management of Low Back Pain: Do Physiotherapists Know the Evidence-Based Guidelines?

Antoine Fourré et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: Clinical practice guidelines promote bio-psychosocial management of patients suffering from low back pain (LBP). The objective of this study was to examine the current knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of physiotherapists about a guideline-adherent approach to LBP and to assess the ability of physiotherapists to recognise signs of a specific LBP in a clinical vignette.

Methods: Physiotherapists were recruited to participate in an online study. They were asked to indicate whether they were familiar with evidence-based guidelines and then to fill in the Health Care Providers' Pain and Impairment Relationship Scale (HC-PAIRS), Back Pain Attitudes Questionnaire (Back-PAQ), Neurophysiology of Pain Questionnaire (NPQ), as well as questions related to two clinical vignettes.

Results: In total, 527 physiotherapists participated in this study. Only 38% reported being familiar with guidelines for the management of LBP. Sixty-three percent of the physiotherapists gave guideline-inconsistent recommendations regarding work. Only half of the physiotherapists recognised the signs of a specific LBP.

Conclusions: The high proportion of physiotherapists unfamiliar with guidelines and demonstrating attitudes and beliefs not in line with evidence-based management of LBP is concerning. It is crucial to develop efficient strategies to enhance knowledge of guidelines among physiotherapists and increase their implementation in clinical practice.

Keywords: adherence; attitudes; beliefs; knowledge; red flags.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow diagram concerning the recruitment of physiotherapists.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Boxplots representing the relation of the HC-PAIRS (a), Back-PAQ (b) and NPQ (c) according to self-reported knowledge of the guidelines.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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