Mark Laslett – Back Pain 300 – Introduction to Advanced Diagnosis & Management

Introduction to Advanced Diagnosis and Management. An introduction to advanced clinical diagnostics and treatments for low back and referred lower limb pain including mechanical discogenic pain.

The Back Pain 300 series of courses is a programme of study designed for physiotherapists, medical practitioners and other health care providers who have experience with managing people with persistent low back pain and referred lower limb pain.

Back Pain 300: Introduction to Advanced Diagnosis and Management.

This is the first lesson in the 300-series. This course is a pre-requisite for other lessons in the 300 series.

Back Pain 300 introduces you to an advanced level of clinical diagnostics and treatments for the various sources and causes of back and referred lower limb pain. In the course Mark challenges the notion of ‘non-specific’ low back pain and shows you how to identify specific subgroups of the back pain population using a simple and structured clinical assessment supported by advanced diagnostic techniques.

What is covered in this course?

This short course shows you how to achieve a clinical diagnosis using the history and physical examination, and highly selective use of technology.

You will also gain the scientific background needed to understand how the anatomy, pathology and biomechanics of the anterior column influence sources of pain posterior to the intervertebral disc. We look specifically at the pathology and anatomy of the intervertebral disc, and investigate the concept and validation of discogenic pain before proceeding onto exploration of other parts all the lumbar spine and pelvis in other Back Pain 300 courses.

The course consists of two chapters that cover pathoanatomy and biomechanics, and introduces the concept of discogenic pain and its diagnosis and management. The course covers:

pathoanatomy and biomechanics of the anterior column
sources and causes of low back and referred lower limb pain
the concept of discogenic pain
anatomy and pathology of the intervertebral disc including normal age-related changes
pain centralisation
principles of clinical diagnosis of LBP
diagnosis by subtraction for subgrouping people with LBP to guide treatment.

Learning Activities in this Course:
The lesson includes a video case study of pain centralisation, an important group since centralisers are the largest subgroup within the back pain population.

You will also be able to download the case notes of the patient seen in the introductory course and be encouraged to self test your own clinical reasoning skills using the details of this case and the learning from the three lectures on the principles of clinical diagnosis.Other learning resources include: