Only 13% of patients with inflammatory back pain referred to an expert: Study

Here's how researchers found patients suffering from inflammatory back pain through social media platforms like Facebook.

Anuradha Varanasi | Published: June 11, 2016 3:46 pm

Researchers discovered through social networking site Facebook that though 81% of patients approached a general practitioner (GP) with the symptoms of inflammatory back pain, only 13% of them were referred to a rheumatologist. These are the causes of back pain you might not know about.

They further found that social media can effectively be used to raise awareness about the symptoms of inflammatory back pain (IBP) and play a key role in early diagnosis of the chronic affliction, a study involving an Indian-origin researcher says.

‘Patients with inflammatory back pain (IBP) can wait years for a correct diagnosis. Early treatment is critical in achieving better outcomes for these patients,’ said Arumugam Moorthy of Britain’s University Hospitals of Leicester NHS trust. Here are tips to deal with chronic back pain.

Moorthy’s team used Facebook over five months to identify adults in the community with symptoms suggestive of IBP and compared the outcome with other forms of recruitment — principally newspaper advertising.

‘Facebook advertising recruited a younger group of respondents and a higher proportion of them fulfilled the criteria for a diagnosis of IBP compared to the group of patients recruited by other methods,’ Moorthy explained.

The study findings were presented recently at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress in London.

Although most (81%) of the chronic back pain patients the researchers recruited through Facebook had consulted their GP, only 13 per cent had actually been referred to a rheumatologist, according to Moorthy.

In the management of IBP, early diagnosis is key to reduce the risk of severe functional disability. Correct diagnosis depends largely on the pattern of clinical symptoms and signs in addition to magnetic resonance imaging. Here’s why you should not ignore lower back pain.

A previous study showed an average delay in diagnosis of more than eight years, with almost one-third of diagnosed patients not referred to a rheumatologist in Britain.

This is partly due to a failure of individuals with IBP symptoms to present to their general practitioner, and partly to a failure of the doctors to recognise those patients with chronic back pain that have an inflammatory rather than a mechanical cause. These are the treatment and surgeries for back pain.

Source: IANS

Image Sourcee: Shutterstock

Published: June 11, 2016 3:46 pm

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