One of the things that we’re interested in in orthopedic surgery and elsewhere is can we predict when back pain is going to become chronic because it is a chronic disorder, chronic back pain that we really have to worry about. And Carey who works in North Carolina has done a number of studies trying to get at this.

These are results of one his studies. 1246 people. What he did was to measure the covariants at baseline and follow-up them up for 12 weeks. And these are the people who felt better and these are the people who weren’t better 12 weeks later. And the things that seemed to predict chronic back pain was the same back pain in older age, as perhaps you might expect. Low income. Being more disabled at baseline, having back pain in the more chronically disabled. If it was more disabling. This is just a questionnaire that measures the extent of the disablement. And having sciatica or leg pain in conjunction with back pain. All these were predictors of chronic back pain.