Comparing Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy with generalised exercise for chronic spinal pain in surgeons: protocol for a pragmatic randomised controlled trial.

introductionChronic musculoskeletal pain is an occupational health concern among surgeons, with spinal pain being commonly reported. Exercise-based physiotherapy is recommended for reducing chronic spinal pain; however, the treatment effects are modest and may vary across clinical subgroups. Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy (MDT) is a classification-based approach that uses a standardised clinical examination to guide exercise-based interventions and self-management strategies, and may offer advantages over non-direction-specific generalised exercise in selected patients. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This pragmatic, two-arm, parallel-group randomised controlled superiority trial will compare MDT with generalised exercise in surgeons with chronic spinal pain and a confirmed directional preference, with a planned recruitment of 62 participants (31 per group). Participants will be randomised 1:1 using a computer-generated allocation sequence in Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), with stratification by sex and permuted blocks of undisclosed size. Interventions will be delivered in routine physiotherapy practice with flexible scheduling within predefined boundaries (maximum six supervised sessions; most expected within the first 12 weeks), with a follow-up period of 26 weeks.The primary outcome is the between-group difference in average pain intensity over the preceding 7 days at 12 weeks, measured using the Numeric Pain Rating Scale and adjusted for baseline pain intensity.The secondary and exploratory outcomes include functional limitations, health-related quality of life, fear of movement, pain catastrophising, pain self-efficacy, therapeutic alliance, exercise adherence and patient global impression of change, assessed at baseline and at 4, 12 and 26 weeks (where applicable). Treatment effects will be analysed using linear mixed-effects models under the intention-to-treat principle. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval has been obtained from the North Denmark Region Committee on Health Research Ethics (N-20240046). The findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT07293130.