ASSOCIATION OF SOMATIC SYMPTOM DISORDERS (SSDs) WITH PAIN, DISABILITY AND QUALITY OF LIFE IN PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC LOW BACK PAIN (CLBP). PRILIMINARY FINDINGS

Objective: To investigate changes in pain, disability, anxiety, depression, somatic symptom burden and quality of life among patients with CLBP after the implementation of a physiotherapy regimen, and to examine the association of SSDs with the above parameters. Materials and methods: Patients with CLBP recruited using random systematic sampling and completed a battery of questionnaires, the Numerical Pain Scale (NPS) for pain, the Rolland-Morris for disability (RMQ), the EuroQoL 5-dimension 5-level (EQ-5D-5L) for health status, the Somatic Symptom Scale-8 (SSS-8) for SSDs, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) for anxiety and depression. A paired t-test, Wilcoxon signed test and McNemar test were used for quantitative, ordinal and qualitative variables respectively. Pearson’s correlation coefficient r was tested examining associations between SSS-8 and NPS, RMQ, EQ-5D-5L and HADS. The level of statistical significance was set at p