Two psychological interventions are effective in severely disabled, chronic back pain patients: a randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND

Many pain patients appreciate biofeedback interventions because of the integration of psychological and physiological aspects. Therefore we wanted to investigate in a sample of chronic back pain patients whether biofeedback ingredients lead to improved outcome of psychological interventions.

METHOD

One hundred and twenty-eight chronic back pain patients were randomly assigned to cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), cognitive-behavioural therapy including biofeedback tools (CBT-B) or waitlist control (WLC). The sample was recruited from a highly disabled group including many patients with low education status and former back surgeries. Measures on pain, physical functioning, emotional functioning, coping strategies and health care utilisation were taken at pretreatment, posttreatment and 6 months of follow-up.

RESULTS

The results indicated significant improvements on most outcome measures for CBT-B and CBT in comparison to WLC. CBT-B and CBT were equally effective (e.g. ITT effect sizes for pain intensity: CBT-B, 0.66 (95% CI 0.39-0.95); CBT, 0.60 (95% CI 0.33-0.87)).

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, biofeedback ingredients did not lead to improved outcome of a psychological intervention. Cognitive-behavioural treatment as a "package" of respondent, operant and cognitive interventions was effective for ameliorating pain-related symptoms for chronic back pain patients treated in an outpatient setting. The high treatment acceptability associated with biofeedback ingredients can also be achieved with pure psychological interventions.