Table 1.
Final treatment nodes included in network meta-analysis
| Treatment node | Description |
|---|---|
| Psychological interventions | |
| Behavioural therapy | Psychological approaches focused on facilitating the removal of positive reinforcement of pain behaviours and promoting health behaviours, in the absence of cognitive strategies14 15 |
| Cognitive behavioural therapy | Combination of behavioural therapies with an additional focus of changing unhelpful cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes), or promoting emotion regulation and problem solving15 |
| Mindfulness | Psychological approaches focused on practicing techniques such as meditation, non-judgmental attention control, and awareness (eg, mindfulness based stress reduction, and acceptance and commitment therapy)37 38 |
| Counselling | Psychological approaches focused on using supportive communication and active listening techniques to facilitate healthy behaviour change (eg, health coaching and motivational interviewing)39 40 |
| Pain education | Psychological approaches focused on improving understanding and knowledge about pain (eg, a biomechanical explanation of LBP), but are clearly focused on the reconceptualisation of beliefs about the pain experience41 |
| Combined psychological approaches | The delivery of two or more psychological approaches together, in the absence of a non-psychological co-intervention (eg, pain education delivered with behavioural therapy) |
| Psychological interventions delivered with non-psychological co-interventions | Behavioural therapy with physiotherapy care; cognitive behavioural therapy with physiotherapy care; mindfulness with physiotherapy care; counselling with physiotherapy care; pain education with physiotherapy care; combined psychological approaches with physiotherapy care |
| Comparison interventions | |
| Physiotherapy care | Interventions that include any combination of care typically delivered by a physiotherapist, for example: formally prescribed and structured exercise programmes (eg, consisting of aerobic, strengthening, stretching, stabilisation, and motor control exercises); passive treatment, including but not limited to spinal manipulative therapy, massage, and electrotherapies; general advice delivered in combination with structured exercise or passive treatment |
| General practitioner care | Interventions considered as standard care provided by general practitioners (eg, medications) |
| Advice | Interventions involving the provision of general advice that is not psychologically informed. Eg, direct instructions to increase physical activity levels, in the absence of a formally prescribed, structured exercise programme |
| No intervention | Eg, waitlist control or no intervention |
| Usual care | Interventions that could not be classified into the other treatment nodes |