Breakthrough Brain-Centered Approach Reduces Chronic Back Pain

Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), a technique that trains individuals to interpret pain signals to the brain as less menacing, proves effective in managing chronic back pain (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Reattribution to Mind-Brain Processes and Recovery From Chronic Back Pain A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial

Go to source). The study, published in JAMA Network Open journal, examined the critical connection between the brain and pain for treating chronic pain and found that after PRT, patients reported reduced back pain intensity.

To study the effects of pain attributions, researchers enrolled over 150 adults experiencing moderately severe chronic back pain in a randomized trial to receive PRT and found two-thirds of people treated with PRT reported being pain-free or nearly so after treatment, compared to only 20 percent of placebo controls.

Impact of Misunderstood Pain Attributions on Treatment Decisions

"This study is critically important because patients' pain attributions are often inaccurate. This can be unhelpful and hurtful when it comes to planning for recovery since pain attributions guide major treatment decisions, such as whether to get surgery or psychological treatment," Ashar said. According to the researchers, before PRT treatment, only 10 percent of participants' attributions of PRT treatment were mind or brain-related.

However, after PRT, this increased to 51 percent, showing that the more participants shifted to viewing their pain as due to mind or brain processes, the greater the reduction in chronic back pain intensity. "Often, discussions with patients focus on biomedical causes of pain. The role of the brain is rarely discussed. With this research, we want to provide patients as much relief as possible by exploring different treatments, including ones that address the brain drivers of chronic pain," he added.

Reference:

1. Reattribution to Mind-Brain Processes and Recovery From Chronic Back Pain A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial - (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2809959)

Source-IANS