Interventional Pain Management and Chronic Low Back Pain: Effectiveness and Patient Outcomes |Biomedgrid

Low back pain is widespread in the general population and practice. Chronic back pain is defined as pain lasting more than 3-6 months. This literature review project will examine the question: In adult patients suffering from chronic back pain, is interventional pain management as good as or better than standard pain management in improving patient-oriented outcomes including safety and tolerability, years lived with disability, reduction in pain, improvement in functional outcome and social participation, and cost-effectiveness? The method used will involve searching the published and grey literature for high-quality systematic reviews, meta-analyses, randomized controlled trials and clinical practice guidelines in the subject with a view to critically appraise the evidence by analyzing intention to treat, the number needed to treat/harm, absolute risk reduction and relative risk reduction. The author hopes to synthesize knowledge in this well-studied area to present standard interventional techniques and their relative effectiveness in chronic back pain to consistently achieve the most common outcomes of importance to patients identified in the literature.