Prioritizing Comparative Effectiveness Research Questions for Treatment Options for Chronic Low Back Pain: A Stakeholder Workshop

One of the most prevalent chronic conditions, chronic low back pain is defined as low back pain occurring on at least half of the days in a 6-month period. Interventions range from exercise and psychosocial interventions to spine surgery. Hundreds of randomized trials have had uniform results, showing either no effect or small effect sizes. The quality of these studies varies, but there is a core of high-quality studies. Physicians and patients face the challenge of choosing from a relatively small selection of modestly effective treatments, with little or no information to help decide which option is best for an individual patient.

As part of PCORI’s efforts to fund high-impact and useful research on critical patient-centered health and healthcare issues, PCORI hosted a multi-stakeholder workgroup to discuss topics that focus on the comparative effectiveness of treatments for chronic low back pain. PCORI intends to use feedback from the workgroup to conduct further gap analyses and to explore a possible funding announcement in this area.

In-person attendance was by invitation only, but the public was welcome to listen in via teleconference/webinar.

Meeting Materials

• Agenda
• Participants' List
• Topic Brief
• Submitted Questions
• Introduction Session - Presentation Slides
• Presentation Slides
• Meeting Summary

Teleconference Audio Recording