ArticlePain2015
Can patients identify what triggers their back pain? Secondary analysis of a case-crossover study.
Article in Pain, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Management of low back pain and lumbosacral radicular syndrome: the Guideline of the Royal Dutch Society for Physical Therapy (KNGF).European journal of physical and rehabilitation medicine · 2024Guideline
- Effect of diagnostic labelling on management intentions for non-specific low back pain: A randomized scenario-based experiment.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2022Trial
- Transient and Long-Term Risks of Common Physical Activities in People With Low Back Pain.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- The prognostic merit of self-reported triggers of recurrent low back pain: study protocol.Chiropractic & manual therapies · 2020Article
- Different predictors of pain severity across age and gender of a Chinese rural population: a cross-sectional survey.BMJ open · 2018Article
- Sleep quality and covariates as predictors of pain intensity among the general population in rural China.Journal of pain research · 2018Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The aim of this case-crossover study was to investigate the extent to which patients can accurately nominate what triggered their new episode of sudden-onset acute low back pain (LBP). We interviewed 999 primary care patients to record exposure to 12 standard triggers and also asked the patients to nominate what they believed triggered their LBP. Exposure to the patient-nominated trigger during the case window was compared with exposure in the control window. Conditional logistic regression models were constructed to quantify the risk of LBP onset associated with the patient-nominated trigger. Sensitivity analyses were conducted varying the duration and timing of case/control windows. We compared the extent to which patient-nominated triggers matched standard triggers. The odds ratios for exposure to patient-nominated triggers ranged from 8.60 to 30.00, suggesting that exposure increases the risk of LBP. Patients' understanding of triggers however seems incomplete, as we found evidence that while some of the standard triggers were well recognised (such as lifting heavy loads), others (such as being distracted during manual tasks) were under-recognised as possible triggers of an episode of LBP. This study provides some evidence that patients can accurately nominate the activity that triggered their new episode of sudden-onset acute LBP.
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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.