Effectiveness of in-group versus individually administered pain neuroscience education on clinical and psychosocial outcomes..., 2024, Fuentes et al

Effectiveness of in-group versus individually administered pain neuroscience education on clinical and psychosocial outcomes in patients with chronic low back pain: randomized controlled study protocol
https://peerj.com/articles/17507/

Objective

(1) This trial will compare the clinical and psychosocial effectiveness of in-group and individually pain neuroscience education (PNE) in patients with chronic low back pain (CLBP). In addition, (2) the influence of social determinants of health on post-treatment results will be analyzed.

Methods
A three-arm randomized controlled trial will be conducted. Sixty-nine participants with CLBP will be recruited in a 1:1:1 ratio. Participants, assessor, and statistician will be blinded to group assignment. The PNE intervention will be adapted to the context of the participants. An experimental group (n = 33) will receive PNE in an in-group modality, the other experimental group (n = 33) will receive PNE in an individually modality and the control group (n = 33) will continue with usual care. Additionally, participants will be encouraged to stay active by walking for 20–30 min 3–5 times per week and will be taught an exercise to improve transversus abdominis activation (bracing or abdominal following). The outcome measures will be fear avoidance and beliefs, pressure pain threshold, pain self-efficacy, catastrophizing, pain intensity, and treatment expectation. Outcome measures will be collected at one-week before intervention, immediately post-intervention, and four-weeks post-intervention.

Conclusion
The innovative approach of PNE oriented to fear beliefs proposed in this study could broaden the application strategies of this educational therapeutic modality. Impact. Contextualized PNE delivered by physical therapist could be essential to achieve a good cost-effectiveness ratio of this intervention to improve the clinical condition of people with CLBP.

 

Posted because this is essentially the PACE model applied to chronic back pain: fear avoidance, catastrophizing, self-efficacy, and so on. And this is really why there is so much pushback, why Cochrane can't retract the exercise review. The house of cards just keeps growing up, so the cards that make the foundations can't be removed without crashing the whole thing.

Remarkable is that none of the citations cross over with the usual "medically unexplained symptoms", even though they are the exact same thing. So there are multiple fraudulent self-citation networks that all boast the same thing, without any actual evidence. All based on models and biased trials that use biased questionnaires with overlapping and/or bizarre ambiguous questions. They even talk of "innovative" treatments, even though this has been used for decades, is basically the current psychosomatic model.

This thing is seriously one of the most fraudulent thing in the world right now. It makes Theranos' fraud look like small potatoes. There is nothing here, and it just keeps sucking up more resources and attention away from real work, while harming people for no reliable benefits, only vague attributions and fake cost-saving.