Which exercise for chronic low back pain?

Funded Activity Summary

About 1 in 10 Australians have persisting or chronic low back pain. Most are managed in primary care and the most frequently prescribed treatment is exercise. Chronic low back pain remains a major health problem because not all patients respond to each treatment so on average treatment effects are small. At present there are no guidelines to help clinicians select the best treatment for a patient. As a result a lot of time and money is wasted on treatments which ultimately fail to help the patient. We have begun a research program to solve this primary health care problem. We have focussed on exercise because the treatment is widely available in primary care and of modest cost. The program includes basic research to understand the mechanism of action of exercise and clinical trials testing the effectiveness of different types of exercise. The proposed study falls into the latter category, and is a direct comparison of the two most promising types of exercise used in Australia. The study will also identify clinical features that modify treatment effects, a finding that will allow clinicians to identify which type of exercise is more likely to be effective for an individual patient. This study offers a potential solution to a major health problem with enormous economic and social costs.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2008

End Date: 01-01-2009

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $516,617.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Clinical Sciences

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

chronic pain | clinical trial | clinical trials | exercise | low back pain | rehabilitation

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