1 Health care providers should use a common language in relation to low back pain patients

Abstract

Uncertainty is the rule rather than the exception when it comes to the underlying causes of ‘common’ or ‘non-specific’ low back pain. It may be called many names, depending on whether the diagnostic term is descriptive, anatomopathological or physiopathological. Classifications have been devised, including various criteria: symptoms and signs, duration, treatment, consequences of low back pain on the patients' daily life, etc. Because back pain frequently runs a recurrent course, functional and pain outcomes need to be considered separately: chronic disability and chronic pain may not be parallel. Thus, pain duration (e.g. acute, transient, recurrent, chronic) is only one element in the definition of chronicity. These difficulties in defining and classifying non-specific low back pain may lead to communication problems among health professionals as well as between patients and health professionals. These difficulties raise questions such as: what kind of diagnostic term should we use to avoid dramatization of non-specific low back pain? how can we improve the definition of long-term low back pain? and how can we assure and reassure the patient that this condition is benign in the majority of the population?