In an effort to learn more about my own back pain, I confess I’ve been surfing the web looking for more information. I’ve come across several mentions of a clinical practice guideline and clinical prediction rule for patients with low back pain. What are these?

Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are suggestions or guidelines for health care professionals to use when treating someone with a specific condition. CPGs are usually developed by a group of people reaching agreement or consensus about how and when to treat the condition.

The decision is based on results of research published on the topic. This provides a baseline for making evidence-based treatment decisions, rather than just trying different things or doing what seems to work best without really knowing.

CPGs also helps insure that patients with the same problem are treated the same or equally based on current, available scientific data.

A clinical prediction rule (CPR) is a way to test patients to find out who can benefit from a particular treatment. For example, in 2005, a group of physical therapists (PTs) developed a CPR for low back pain (LBP) patients. They were able to identify four things that would predict success or failure in treating LBP patients with stabilization exercises.

This type of classification system is very practical and based on scientific data from research. We may expect to see more CPGs and CPRs for various problems, including acute and chronic low back pain.