Accelerating treatment for people with chronic low back pain

The need

Low back pain is the leading cause of disability worldwide and affects nearly four million Australians, with prevalence and costs expected to rise sharply over the next decade. Approximately one in three people with low back pain continue to experience symptoms after three months. Current treatments typically provide only small, short-term benefits. Advances in understanding how chronic pain develops have led to new treatment approaches, including graded sensorimotor retraining, which has shown clinically meaningful and lasting improvements in pain and function in a single centre, sham- controlled, randomised control trial. These promising results will now be further investigated in real-world primary care settings.

About

This trial will investigate the effectiveness and implementation of graded sensorimotor retraining compared to standard care options for chronic low back pain in primary care physiotherapy practice. Comparing graded sensorimotor retraining against real world comparators in real world settings is the next step in the translational pipeline of this intervention.

Impact

• This research will accelerate the translation of a promising treatment model into everyday clinical practice.
• Collaboration with education partners will ensure the findings are directly implemented to benefit people affected by chronic low back pain.

Funding

Our funding is from a Medical Research Future Funding (MRFF) project grant (RESOLVE-D, MRFF ID: MRF2031758)