NCT05467592

Central Sensitization in Patients Seeking Outpatient Physical Therapy Services

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 77 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Kansas Medical Center · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: —

Summary

This is an observational study to examine presence of CS in patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA), chronic LBP (CLBP), and chronic neck pain (CNP) seeking outpatient physical therapy (PT) services. The study will also examine if outcomes differ between patients with CS and patients without CS symptoms with standard PT interventions.

Detailed description

Central Sensitization (CS), defined as augmented pain processing, is common in subgroup of nearly all chronic pain conditions, including fibromyalgia, CLBP, OA, and chronic tension headache. However, current studies of CS are primarily limited to research settings, lacking the knowledge about prevalence of CS and rehabilitation outcomes in usual clinical care. Practicing clinicians do not routinely assess for CS symptoms. Without proper screening for CS, and lack of knowledge of varying levels of nervous system involvement contributing to pain, clinicians are unable to fully identify the depth of the mechanisms and therefore unable to fully determine the best treatment strategies. This observational study addresses this gap in knowledge by screening patients for CS symptoms.

Conditions

• Low Back Pain
• Knee Osteoarthritis
• Neck Pain

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Standard Physical Therapy care	All therapy will be given as it would have routinely been administered in the clinic. Standard care for all patients includes physical therapy and chiropractic treatment at each visit. There is a nurse practitioner on site. If necessary, patients can receive trigger point injections to the musculature around the back and neck, platelet rich plasma, or headache injections by the nurse practitioner. These interventions vary on a case by case basis. Involvement in the study will not impact the patients plan of care. We will collect this information as confounders and factor into statistical analysis.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-06-06
• Primary completion: 2024-01-22
• Completion: 2024-01-22
• First posted: 2022-07-20
• Last updated: 2025-05-20

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States