Compared with usual care, risk-stratified care did not improve outcomes for low back pain
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Key takeaways:
- Researchers wrote that risk-stratified care offers “no obvious benefit” to patients with low back pain.
- Results were analyzed among a population of patients from the Military Health System.
Compared with conventional care, risk-stratified care did not improve outcome scores for patients from the Military Health System who had low back pain, according to published results.
Researchers performed a parallel-group randomized clinical trial of 270 patients (mean age of 34.1 years) who sought care for low back pain (LBP) from a primary care clinic within the Military Health System (MHS) from April 2017 to February 2020. According to the study, 134 patients received usual care and 136 patients received risk-stratified care. The primary outcome measure was the Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire.
Among all patients, 7.2% (n = 21) were stratified as high-risk patients. At 1 year, researchers found no significant differences in the Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire scores between patients who received usual care vs. risk-stratified (least squares mean ratio: 1). Researchers also found no differences between the care groups for Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System pain or function scores, according to the study.
“These findings suggest that risk-stratified care offers no obvious benefit when implemented in primary care within the MHS,” the researchers wrote in the study.
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