Two Psychological Interventions Are Effective in Severely Disabled, Chronic Back Pain Patients: A Randomised Controlled Trial

Background Many pain patients appreciate biofeedback interventions because of the integration of psychological and physiological aspects. Therefore we wanted to investigate in a sample of chronic back pain patients whether biofeedback ingredients lead to improved outcome of psychological interventions. Method One hundred and twenty-eight chronic back pain patients were randomly assigned to cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), cognitive-behavioural therapy including biofeedback tools (CBT-B) or waitlist control (WLC). The sample was recruited from a highly disabled group including many patients with low education status and former back surgeries. Measures on pain, physical func-tioning, emotional functioning, coping strategies and health care utilisation were taken at pretreatment, posttreatment and 6 months of follow-up. Results The results indicated significant improvements on most outcome measures for CBT-B and CBT in comparison to WLC. CBT-B and CBTwere equally effective (e.g. ITT effect sizes for pain intensity: CBT-B, 0.66 (95 % CI 0.39–0.95)