Original articleResponsiveness of the Short-Form 36 and Oswestry Disability Questionnaire in Chronic Nonspecific Low Back and Lower Limb Pain Treated With Customized Foot Orthotics
Section snippets
Participants
Subjects included 30 consecutive patients attending a single primary care clinic in Edmonton, Canada, with the primary concern of low back and/or lower limb pain that was determined by the physician to be due to nonspecific (ie, muscular) low back pain, or in the case of leg pain, to be due to tendonitis, bursitis, and similar soft tissue disorders. Patients were included if they were 18 years or older and had 1 or more of the aforementioned diagnoses. Patients were excluded if they did not
Results
The mean age of the sample was 53.9 ± 12.9 years, with 57% men and 43% women. The mean duration of the most chronic pain symptom was 14 ± 14 months (range, 3-60 months). Eleven (34%) of the subjects had chronic low back pain only, 10 (33%) had lower limb pain only, and the remainder (33%) had both low back pain and at least 1 site of lower limb pain.
Both questionnaire measures showed a statistically significant improvement over the 6-week period of customized foot orthotic use. The
Discussion
This study shows that in a primary care setting, patients have a high rate of reporting pain reduction with the use of customized foot orthotics for nonspecific low back and/or lower limb pain, as evidenced by improvements in the ODQ and the PCS score of the SF-36. After 6 weeks of orthotics use, the ODQ showed the greatest responsiveness
The purpose of this study was not to determine the effectiveness of customized orthotics because this requires a randomized controlled trial. Effect size
Acknowledgment
There was no source of funding for this project.
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