CRITICAL APPRAISAL

Critical Appraisal

Critical Appraisal

Introduction

The study is related to the article which focuses on persistent back pain, in the study, the Bristol tool is used for the critical appraisal of the article. The reason for using this tool is that the tool identifies each and every important aspect of a study, and analyzes and studies that aspects step after the other. This will help in giving an accurate findings and appraisal of the article being critically appraised. The limitations of this study, as admitted by the author herself is the inability of correlation based studies to provide evidence for causality, and the sample being a “convenience sample” as participants was aware of the motives of the study. This suggests that the study should involve a predictive design that is measures of the same construct should be measured sometimes in the future and the similar sets of data are compared for ascertaining validity.

Appraisal

The authors of the article, Persistent back pain - why do physical therapy clinicians continue treatment? A mixed methods study of chiropractors, osteopaths and physiotherapists” has discussed the mixed method as a therapy treatment for persistent back pain. The authors have discussed that over 80 percent of people can expect to have back pain at some point during their lifetime. Many of them will experience considerable discomfort, disability, and even temporary immobilization. The indirect costs of back pain which include doctor visits, lost time from work, and disability payments are estimated to exceed $20 billion each year. On the plus side, the vast majority (up to 90 percent) of back pain disappears on its own within a few days no matter what a person does. This is no guarantee that the pain will not return later as the many people who suffer from recurrent back pain will be the first to point out.

In accordance with the authors, low back pain in particular is quite common in women. Some of this pain is associated with reproductive functions. For example, for many women back pain is a regular part of the monthly menstrual cycle, often occurring during or just before menstruation. A large number of women also develop lower back pain during pregnancy, as well as during childbirth itself. And some women with endometriosis develop severe back pain both before and during menstruation.

Other conditions common in women such as osteoarthritis and osteoporosis frequently involve some degree of back pain. Some women with osteoarthritis develop a kind of spinal stiffness known as spondylosis (also called degenerative joint disease or osteoarthritis of the spine). This disorder develops when disks wear out (owing to mechanical wear and tear or simple aging), with the result that the spaces between vertebrae narrow and are often filled in with bony spurs (osteophytes). Although back pain can occasionally be due to an infection, a tumor (such as metastasized breast cancer), or an abscess, it is most commonly caused by mechanical pressure on the back resulting from heavy lifting or repetitive strain, or it can simply be a result of ...