Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
The most recent articles from:
Acad Emerg Med
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Observational Study
Depression and Functional Outcomes in Patients Presenting to the Emergency Department With Low Back Pain.
Low back pain (LBP) is a common reason for patients to present to emergency departments (EDs). Our objective was to describe the associations between depressive symptoms, pain severity, and functional impairment up to 3 months after initial ED presentation for LBP. ⋯ Significant positive temporal associations exist between initial severity and 3-month progression of depressive symptoms and 3-month pain intensity and disability outcomes for ED patients with LBP. Future work is needed to investigate whether behavioral interventions initiated from the ED may mitigate the incidence and severity of LBP-related chronic pain and functional impairments.