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Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

Back schools for acute and subacute non‐specific low‐back pain

Overview of attention for article published in Cochrane database of systematic reviews, April 2016
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (93rd percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (68th percentile)

Mentioned by

blogs
2 blogs
twitter
22 X users
facebook
9 Facebook pages
wikipedia
1 Wikipedia page
googleplus
1 Google+ user

Citations

dimensions_citation
41 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
457 Mendeley
Title
Back schools for acute and subacute non‐specific low‐back pain
Published in
Cochrane database of systematic reviews, April 2016
DOI 10.1002/14651858.cd008325.pub2
Pubmed ID
Authors

Nolwenn Poquet, Chung‐Wei Christine Lin, Martijn W Heymans, Maurits W van Tulder, Rosmin Esmail, Bart W Koes, Christopher G Maher

Abstract

Since the introduction of the Swedish back school in 1969, back schools have frequently been used for treating people with low-back pain (LBP). However, the content of back schools has changed and appears to vary widely today. In this review we defined back school as a therapeutic programme given to groups of people, which includes both education and exercise. This is an update of a Cochrane review first published in 1999, and updated in 2004. For this review update, we split the review into two distinct reviews which separated acute from chronic LBP. To assess the effectiveness of back schools on pain and disability for people with acute or subacute non-specific LBP. We also examined the effect on work status and adverse events. We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, PubMed and two clinical trials registers up to 4 August 2015. We also checked the reference lists of articles and contacted experts in the field of research on LBP. We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-RCTs that reported on back school for acute or subacute non-specific LBP. The primary outcomes were pain and disability. The secondary outcomes were work status and adverse events. Back school had to be compared with another treatment, a placebo (or sham or attention control) or no treatment. We used the 2009 updated method guidelines for this Cochrane review. Two review authors independently screened the references, assessed the quality of the trials and extracted the data. We set the threshold for low risk of bias, a priori, as six or more of 13 internal validity criteria and no serious flaws (e.g. large drop-out rate). We classified the quality of the evidence into one of four levels (high, moderate, low or very low) using the adapted Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. We contacted study authors for additional information. We collected adverse effects information from the trials. The search update identified 273 new references, of which none fulfilled our inclusion criteria. We included four studies (643 participants) in this updated review, which were all included in the previous (2004) update. The quality of the evidence was very low for all outcomes. As data were too clinically heterogeneous to be pooled, we described individual trial results. The results indicate that there is very low quality evidence that back schools are no more effective than a placebo (or sham or attention control) or another treatment (physical therapies, myofascial therapy, joint manipulations, advice) on pain, disability, work status and adverse events at short-term, intermediate-term and long-term follow-up. There is very low quality evidence that shows a statistically significant difference between back schools and a placebo (or sham or attention control) for return to work at short-term follow-up in favour of back school. Very low quality evidence suggests that back school added to a back care programme is more effective than a back care programme alone for disability at short-term follow-up. Very low quality evidence also indicates that there is no difference in terms of adverse events between back school and myofascial therapy, joint manipulation and combined myofascial therapy and joint manipulation. It is uncertain if back schools are effective for acute and subacute non-specific LBP as there is only very low quality evidence available. While large well-conducted studies will likely provide more conclusive findings, back schools are not widely used interventions for acute and subacute LBP and further research into this area may not be a priority.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 22 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 457 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Switzerland 1 <1%
Unknown 456 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 90 20%
Student > Bachelor 56 12%
Researcher 36 8%
Student > Ph. D. Student 35 8%
Other 26 6%
Other 90 20%
Unknown 124 27%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 127 28%
Nursing and Health Professions 88 19%
Psychology 13 3%
Unspecified 11 2%
Neuroscience 11 2%
Other 56 12%
Unknown 151 33%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 34. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 March 2022.
All research outputs
#1,172,357
of 25,457,297 outputs
Outputs from Cochrane database of systematic reviews
#2,422
of 11,499 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#19,838
of 312,569 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Cochrane database of systematic reviews
#78
of 245 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,457,297 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 11,499 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 40.0. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 312,569 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 245 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 68% of its contemporaries.