Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) as Treatment for Chronic Back Pain - an Observational Study with Assessment of Thalamocortical Dysrhythmia

Abstract

Background: A pilot study of an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program on a sample of low back pain patients was conducted in order to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of the intervention as well as changes in an EEG pattern called thalamocortical dysrhythmia which is associated with chronic pain. Patients and Methods: 22 patients with chronic low back pain participated in an MBSR program. Effect sizes were measured for psychological functioning, pain severity, and quality of life. Furthermore, 4 parameters of the EEG power spectral density were assessed. Results: Medium size effect sizes were found for health-related quality of life (EQ-5D, VAS, d = 0.43, p = 0.02; SF-12, psychological functioning, d = 0.50, p = 0.05), health-related life satisfaction (questions on life satisfaction d = 0.69, p = 0.01), depression (HADS, d = 0.48, p = 0.04, Brief Symptom Inventory d = 0.41, p = 0.04), and affective pain perception (pain perception scale d = 0.50, p = 0.04). The most relevant pain severity measurements improved in the range of d = 0.45-0.75 (p = 0.01-0.24). EEG analyses revealed no differences between the pre- and post-intervention. Conclusion: MBSR is a feasible intervention for patients with low back pain. They benefit from medium size effects which are comparable to similar behavioral interventions. Randomized controlled trials are needed in order to determine the specificity of these benefits.

The Effects of Forest Therapy on Coping with Chronic Widespread Pain: Physiological and Psychological Differences between Participants in a Forest Therapy Program and a Control Group

“…In sum, there is no precedent research of forest therapy on CWP. However, in the application of mindfulness based meditation on chronic back pain [ 41 ], the medium size of effect was found for health-related quality of life, depression and pain perception, whereas the large size of effect was found for health-related quality of life in this study. Thus, the effect sizes found in this study are quite compatible to the effects sizes reported in other studies on comparable pain-therapies.…”

Thalamocortical dysrhythmia detected by machine learning

“…In this paper, we only look at TCD in the specific neurological (i.e., tinnitus, pain, Parkinson’s) and neuropsychiatric (i.e., depression) disorders suggested in the original paper on TCD 9 . Further research has shown that TCD could also be present in schizophrenia 37 , migraines 38 , visual snow 39 , and chronic back pain 40 . Therefore, future research could also look at these additional pathologies and cross-validate our findings by including non-TCD-related disorders.…”

A Systematic Review of Biological Mechanisms and Chronic Pain Outcomes During Stress Reduction Interventions

“…CLBP was the most frequent CP condition studied (n ¼ 6 studies; Ardito et al, 2017;Braden et al, 2016;Cho et al, 2015;Lee et al, 2014;Schmidt et al, 2015;Yuen et al, 2017;Zgierska et al, 2016), followed by fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS; n ¼ 2; Coherence: Treatment group demonstrated increased postintervention cardiac coherence ratio, t(7) Gerdle et al, 2016;Grossman et al, 2017) . In two articles, researchers reported on individuals with CP and an additional primary diagnosis, specifically, posttraumatic stress disorder (Scioli-Salter et al, 2016) and Parkinson's disease (Törnhage et al, 2013).…”