Common current pharmacological approaches to chronic back pain concern with the adverse consequences associated with long-term use of opioids that may limit treatment options. An emerging alternative approach is the use of telehealth interventions, but limited evidence is available regarding the relative efficacy of the different telehealth approaches. Therefore, the results of this clinical trial suggest that home-based, telephone-delivered treatments did not significantly differ in their benefits for back pain severity and disability.

To evaluate the effectiveness of a telephone-delivered, home-based cognitive-behavioural therapy for chronic low back pain as compared to a matched supportive care (SC) therapy.

A total of sixty-six participants with low back pain were divided to either an SC condition matched for contact frequency, format, and time or  an 8-week Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and accomplished the approved measures of improvement in pain severity, back pain disability, and overall improvement.

Treatment group did not exhibit a meaningful difference in decline in pain severity or improvements in back pain disability. Subjects ranked their overall improvement levels at 31% (CBT) versus 18.5% (SC).

According to the findings of the analysis,  home-based, telephone-delivered CBT and SC treatments showed no significant difference in their advantages for back pain disability and severity, and may need more investigation for applications to hospital settings.