Psychological distress confirmed as predictor of long-term back-related functional limitations in primary care settings

Abstract

Background and Objective Among the possible predictors of back pain outcomes that have been studied, indices of psychological distress have been found to have a high prognostic value. This study aimed at assessing the validity of a predictive model of long-term back-related functional limitations that is based on psychological distress, in a new sample of subjects. Study Design and Setting The study was conducted with 860 French-speaking workers who consulted for nonspecific back pain in primary care settings of the Quebec City area. They were interviewed at baseline and again 2 years later. Psychological distress and back-related functional limitations were measured respectively with items drawn from the Symptom Checklist 90 Revised and the Roland–Morris Disability Questionnaire. Analyses were conducted by forcing the model previously developed on a sample of English-speaking health maintenance organization (HMO) members of Washington state. Results The model correctly classified 82% of subjects as to their functional limitation status at 2 years. The accuracy of the prediction was similar to that reported in the original study. Conclusion The fact that this predictive model of back-related functional limitations led to similar results in a different sample of subjects and in another language brings strong support to its validity.