The management of low back pain commonly includes pharmacological management. Some clinical practice guidelines for managing low back pain now recommend avoiding some medicines, such as opioid analgesics and gabapentinoids (pregabalin, gabapentin), as the benefit often does not outweigh the harms. In people with work-related [...]
Participants aged 18 years and over, with and without low back pain, were recruited via the social media channel Facebook, to view either a humorous video, a neutral video, or to no intervention. The videos were delivered online, explained evidence-based management for low back pain, [...]
Workers with low back pain (LBP) frequently seek care from physiotherapists. We sought to identify patterns of physiotherapy attendance and factors associated with these patterns in Australian workers with accepted compensation claims for LBP. We included workers with accepted workers' compensation claims for LBP from [...]
We identified that over 80% of Australian workers with accepted workers’ compensation claims for low back pain longer than 2 weeks attended physiotherapists, chiropractors, and/or osteopaths in the first 2 years of their claim. Nearly 90% of these workers only attended physiotherapists, approximately two percent solely attended [...]
Our aim was to develop and user-test a patient decision aid for children and adolescents following ACL rupture to be used with parents and health professionals that presents evidence-based information on treatment options. Patient decision aids are resources that present balanced information on the benefits [...]
Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a recognized postoperative complication of hip or knee arthroplasty and incurs major morbidity and mortality. While anticoagulants are the mainstay of chemoprophylaxis, aspirin has recently emerged as a popular prophylactic agent. However, there is a lack of high-quality evidence comparing aspirin [...]
Dr Caitlin Jones aimed to investigate the efficacy and safety of opioids for low back pain, and uncovered some interesting findings in her research. Dr Caitlin Jones unpacks her findings in this latest episode of Research Bytes. Listen to find out more, you can read [...]
A recent Four Corners story ‘Pain Factory’ featured Prof Ian Harris and covered a Cochrane review by Adrian Traeger, Chris Maher and team. The program dealt with a range of factors central to Wiser Healthcare. More than three million Australians are living with chronic pain, [...]
In an episode of ABC’s Four Corners this week, the use of spinal cord stimulators for chronic back pain was brought into question. Spinal cord stimulators are devices implanted surgically which deliver electric impulses directly to the spinal cord. They’ve been used to treat people with chronic [...]
The ability to efficiently identify patients at higher risk of poor outcomes after joint replacement would enable limited resources for post-operative follow-up to be directed to those with the greatest clinical need. This is particularly important as joint replacement rates continue to grow internationally, stretching [...]