Trial reportBMC musculoskeletal disorders2013
Can pathoanatomical pathways of degeneration in lumbar motion segments be identified by clustering MRI findings.
Trial report in BMC musculoskeletal disorders, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Modic changes-Their associations with low back pain and activity limitation: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis.PloS one · 2018Pooled it
- Obesity increases the odds of intervertebral disc herniation and spinal stenosis; an MRI study of 1634 low back pain patients.European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society · 2024Article
- Chronic back pain sub-grouped via psychosocial, brain and physical factors using machine learning.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Does Overall Cervical Spine Pathology Relate to the Clinical Heterogeneity of Chronic Whiplash?The American journal of emergency medicine · 2020Article
- The association between subgroups of MRI findings identified with latent class analysis and low back pain in 40-year-old Danes.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2018Observational
- Degenerative Pathways of Lumbar Motion Segments--A Comparison in Two Samples of Patients with Persistent Low Back Pain.PloS one · 2016Article
- Do MRI findings identify patients with chronic low back pain and Modic changes who respond best to rest or exercise: a subgroup analysis of a randomised controlled trial.Chiropractic & manual therapies · 2015Article
- A comparison of three clustering methods for finding subgroups in MRI, SMS or clinical data: SPSS TwoStep Cluster analysis, Latent Gold and SNOB.BMC medical research methodology · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMagnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the gold standard for detailed visualisation of spinal pathological and degenerative processes, but the prevailing view is that such imaging findings have little or no clinical relevance for low back pain. This is because these findings appear to have little association with treatment effects in clinical populations, and mostly a weak association with the presence of pain in the general population.
methodsThis study is a secondary analysis of data from 631 patients, from an outpatient spine clinic, who had been screened for inclusion in a randomised controlled trial. The available data created a total sample pool of 3,155 vertebral motion segments. The mean age of the cohort was 42 years (SD 10.8, range 18-73) and 54% were women.
resultsTwelve clusters of MRI findings were identified, described and grouped into five different hypothetical pathways of degeneration that appear to have face validity.
conclusionsThis study has shown that Latent Class Analysis can be used to identify clusters of MRI findings from people with LBP and that those clusters can be grouped into degenerative pathways that are biologically plausible. If these clusters of MRI findings are reproducible in other datasets of similar patients, they may form a stable platform to investigate the relationship between degenerative pathways and clinically important characteristics such as pain and activity limitation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.