Low back pain in primary care: a description of 1250 patients with low back pain in danish general and chiropractic practice.

Abstract

Study Design. Baseline description of a multicenter cohort study. Objective. To describe patients with low back pain (LBP) in both chiropractic and general practice in Denmark. Background. To optimize standards of care in the primary healthcare sector, detailed knowledge of the patient populations in different settings is needed. In Denmark, most LBP-patients access primary healthcare through chiropractic or general practice. Methods. Chiropractors and general practitioners recruited adult patients seeking care for LBP. Extensive baseline questionnaires were obtained and descriptive analyses presented separately for general and chiropractic practice patients, Mann-Whitney rank sum test and Pearson's chi-square test, were used to test for differences between the two populations. Results. Questionnaires were returned from 934 patients in chiropractic practice and 319 patients from general practice. Four out of five patients had had previous episodes, one-fourth were on sick leave, and the LBP considerably limited daily activities. The general practice patients were slightly older and less educated, more often females, and generally worse on all disease-related parameters than chiropractic patients. All differences were statistically significant. Conclusions. LBP in primary care was recurrent, causing sick leave and activity limitations. There were clear differences between the chiropractic and general practice populations in this study.