Telehealth is defined as the provision of healthcare remotely through the form of telecommunications, such as telephones or laptops. The primary aim of Telehealth is to improve patient's health through education and service provision while reducing healthcare costs and overcoming geographical barriers.
Telehealth in other conditions has promoted adherence. A study on hospital readmittance reported that 49% of participants who received Telehealth were likely to be readmitted to the hospital compared with 67% of those who did not receive the Telehealth treatment.
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| Telehealth for Low Back Pain |
Telehealth as a Tool for Assessing Low Back Pain
Telehealth can be and has been used in the assessment and management of Low Back Pain recently. There are certain critical aspects of Telehealth that drive success in this area, including that it can encourage early intervention, patient participation, and good communication between clinician and patient.
Tools for Assessments
The main tools used to perform Telehealth assessments and managements are mobile or device applications, websites, online chats or group discussions, email discussions, phone calls, or a combination of a number of these. Telehealth has been commonly used in remote populations as these do not have easy access to clinics.
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| Telehealth for Low Back Pain |
A 2014 study was investigating whether Telerehabilitation is a viable alternative to face-face assessment for patients with low back pain. Twenty-six participants were involved. The study found that there was an agreement in both approaches to identifying pain eliciting movements but poor agreement in identifying reasons for limitation in movement.
There have been several trials investigating the cost-effectiveness of Telehealth triage. One such study investigating the use of Telehealth when implementing the McKenzie method for assessing and managing low back pain found Telehealth was significantly more clinically effective, and approximately 50% more cost-effective than the clinical based McKenzie treatment.
The main challenge facing the implementation of Telehealth is the limited existence of effective internet service facilities, and the initial engagement from patients is dependant on the adequate technological literacy of the patients.
Another way in which Telehealth aids in assessments is in its use in remote monitoring. Devices can collect physiological data from a distance and rapidly transfer that data to the patient’s cardiologist. Hospitals can have semi-autonomous monitoring of selected patients without the need for nurses to go over to the patient, leading to a 40% reduction in admissions and a significant drop in cost.
A new musculoskeletal assessment framework published in Cureus provides pre-consultation guidance and step-by-step remote examination instructions to musculoskeletal clinicians working in primary care to adapt their assessments based on published evidence, and community-sourced best practice; it also includes patient and clinician resources (patient information leaflet and photographs of examinations).
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| Telehealth for Low Back Pain |
Future Improvements to Telehealth Assessments
The majority of Telehealth facilities are implemented in areas where geographical location greatly restricts the patient’s ability to attend face-to-face consultations. However, very little research has been conducted in metropolitan cities, such as in the UK, where the population is not so sparsely populated. Hence it would be good to see more work carried out in the UK.
Furthermore, the majority of the assessment techniques used by clinicians for investigating low back pain are designed for face-to-face environments. This reduces the same assessment techniques reliability when completed in a telehealth setting.
More research into the adaption of these techniques into Telehealth appropriate ones, as well as trials to see whether these are effective is needed.
There have not been any published studies showing how carrying out a subjective assessment would work using TeleHealth. This is a concern with the patient’s safety and data security affected if a subjective assessment is not entirely feasible within Telehealth.
Still, further research needs to be carried out to assess more closely the economic benefits to Telehealth, as well as further advancements in technology to increase the accuracy of telehealth assessment consultation, as even with video consultations, the prefered form of Telehealth for assessing posture, it can still be challenging to discriminate physical landmarks on a video call.
Using Telehealth is a good alternative, but more work needs to be done to improve postural assessments, and further research is needed to see how devices utilising remote monitoring can be applied to LBP patients.
Management Options
The three main Telehealth models for Physical Therapy are:
Live Video (Synchronous): This uses real-time live consultation to treat patients.
Store and Forward (Asynchronous): This uses the secure transmission of pre-recorded materials to treat patients.
Remote Patient Monitoring: This uses technology to remotely get medical data on the patient’s treatment progress.
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| Telehealth for Low Back Pain |
Future Improvements to Telehealth Managements
A major issue affecting the development of Telehealth is that it is as good as the technology is the most available technologies, such as SMS, Apps and Health Trackers, are the least investigated.
These have shown some promise in some papers but not specifically enough with LBP. Therefore more research needs to be done to investigate the effects of app-based interventions and fitness trackers especially.
Also, as more technology has been developed specifically for health purposes, not many quality technologies exist that are transferable to physical therapy. Those that do exist require further testing to know their full clinical benefit.
As video calls are the most frequently used telehealth tool more research into whether face to face video management enhances LBP management is required to support its use.
There is also a need to investigate multimodal interventions within Telehealth, as the majority of telehealth methods attempt to incorporate the three main models. Trials investigating the relative success of these three models are needed.
As with assessment methodology, there is no specific management option with Telehealth and a lot of the studies investigated use such different means it is difficult to come to a clear conclusion.
Confounded upon this is the disagreement within the literature for managing low back pain using Telehealth, with most of the current telehealth-based interventions showing no significant clinically important benefits in the outcomes investigated, particularly for chronic Low back pain.
In contrast, research on acute or subacute low back pain has shown promising significantly important benefits in the outcomes measured.
The significant benefits Telehealth has on all types of low back pain patient's quality of life, suggests that there is biopsychosocial benefits telehealth has on low back pain patients and demands further study.
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| Telehealth for Low Back Pain |
Telehealth Pros and Cons
Within Telehealth, there are several pros et contras. One study investigating the use of a Telehealth based website to facilitate health coaching found that participants logged into the website only 38% of the recommended time.
Showing that adherence and compliance to the telehealth interventions were lower than recommended or expected. Within this study, there are some possible explanations to why the adherence to the telehealth treatment was lower than expected.
Potentially the patients were becoming disheartened and disinterested as the effects of the treatment on their low back pain were smaller than they might have expected.
Also, the technology itself may have been limited and a factor contributing to the higher level of non-compliance than expected.
Below is a break down of the most common advantages and disadvantages that Telehealth offers to physiotherapy, particularly in the management of low back pain.
Telehealth provides an alternative solution for people who live in remote areas and are not always able to travel. Poor patient compliance is associated with using telehealth.
Telehealth makes healthcare accessible to everyone, as long as there is an internet connection, even during a global pandemic like 2020. Patients often decline to use Telehealth due to preferring face to face contact.
Telehealth provides a means to use new technology to enhance health services. May lead to fragmentation of care amongst multiple providers.
Telehealth is effective in managing health conditions such as obesity and asthma. There may be a lower quality of the patient-clinician relationship
Telehealth reduces healthcare costs by improving efficiency and revenue. Patients may have a lack of access to the necessary technology.
Telehealth offers a better possibility of continuity of care. There is a high initial cost of acquiring the technical equipment.
Telehealth can ease the global burden of low back pain, which has a high prevalence rate of 39% worldwide. Many argue its overall effectiveness for dealing with chronic Low Back Pain is limited.
Telehealth has been shown to significantly improve patients quality of life, particularly patients with chronic low back pain. Telehealth may be detrimental to clinicians establishing patient rapport.
Patients had increased compliance with their treatment exercises.
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| Telehealth for Low Back Pain |
Conclusion
Telehealth has very high validity and reliability suggesting there is a clinical use. From a moderate amount of research, there is some benefit to using Telehealth to manage patients with low back pain, but there is still a need for more research.
Within physiotherapy telehealth is a relatively new area of study, still requiring the development and testing of specific assessment and management approaches to treating certain conditions.
Within telehealth research, the patient satisfaction scores and patient quality of life scores are significantly higher within telehealth interventions groups. Despite this, there is still a public concern associated with Telehealth.
Many patients may not fully understand the breadth of physiotherapy and what is included within physiotherapy treatment, assuming that physiotherapy requires physical contact.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth has played an essential role in enabling physiotherapy clinics to continue semi-functioning during global lockdowns.
Telehealth has enabled infections to be avoided while still maintaining contact with patients ensuring exercises are being adhered to.
There is a vital role Telehealth plays in sparsely populated communities where the distance between clinical facilities and patients is too great or dangerous for either patient or clinician to traves.
The research has shown that Telehealth can be an effective supplement to usual physiotherapy, rather than a replacement.
The future of Telehealth seems promising, with the continual developments and improvements of current technologies, hopefully, followed by more researcher, from all areas of the world, taking an active interest in Telehealth biopsychosocial, hygienic, and economic benefits.
Consequently, further clinical trials and systematic reviews will be carried out broadening and deepening the pool of research to base the management of low back pain using Telehealth.
