title: Low back pain in primary care: a description of 1250 patients with low back pain in danish general and chiropractic practice.
abstract: Study Design. Baseline description of a multicenter cohort study. Objective. To describe patients with low back pain (LBP) in both chiropractic and general practice in Denmark. Background. To optimize standards of care in the primary healthcare sector, detailed knowledge of the patient populations in different settings is needed. In Denmark, most LBP-patients access primary healthcare through chiropractic or general practice. Methods. Chiropractors and general practitioners recruited adult patients seeking care for LBP. Extensive baseline questionnaires were obtained and descriptive analyses presented separately for general and chiropractic practice patients, Mann-Whitney rank sum test and Pearson's chi-square test, were used to test for differences between the two populations. Results. Questionnaires were returned from 934 patients in chiropractic practice and 319 patients from general practice. Four out of five patients had had previous episodes, one-fourth were on sick leave, and the LBP considerably limited daily activities. The general practice patients were slightly older and less educated, more often females, and generally worse on all disease-related parameters than chiropractic patients. All differences were statistically significant. Conclusions. LBP in primary care was recurrent, causing sick leave and activity limitations. There were clear differences between the chiropractic and general practice populations in this study.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics, University of Southern Denmark, 5230 Odense, Denmark ; Nordic Institute of Chiropractic and Clinical Biomechanics, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Lise
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1620-4556
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hestbaek
authors.affiliation: Audit Project Odense, Institute of Regional Health Services Research, University of Southern Denmark, 5000 Odense C, Denmark.
authors.forename: Anders
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Munck
authors.affiliation: Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics, University of Southern Denmark, 5230 Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Lisbeth
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7588-8663
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hartvigsen
authors.affiliation: Research Unit of General Practice, Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, 5000 Odense C, Denmark.
authors.forename: Dorte Ejg
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Jarbøl
authors.affiliation: Research Unit of General Practice, Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, 5000 Odense C, Denmark.
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Søndergaard
authors.affiliation: Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics, University of Southern Denmark, 5230 Odense, Denmark ; Nordic Institute of Chiropractic and Clinical Biomechanics, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Alice
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-5537-6038
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kongsted