Occupational Medicine 2008 58(6):447-448; doi:10.1093/occmed/kqn077
© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Occupational Medicine. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
The Örebro Musculoskeletal Pain Questionnaire
Grahame Brown
Musculoskeletal, Sport & Exercise Medicine and Occupational Health, Birmingham, UK
E-mail: grahamebrown50{at}hotmail.com
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A brief history
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The Örebro Musculoskeletal Pain Questionnaire (ÖMPQ),
formerly known as the Acute Low Back Pain Screening Questionnaire
(ALBPSQ), was developed to help identify patients at risk for
developing persistent back pain problems and related disability.
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Description
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The questionnaire is intended to be used with individuals who
are experiencing regional pain problems that are affecting their
performance at work, taking repeated short spells of sickness
absence or are currently off work and have been so for up to
12 weeks. There are 21 scored questions concerning attitudes
and beliefs, behaviour in response to pain, affect, perception
of work and activities of daily living. It can usually be completed
in 5 min before the patient meets the health professional. A
cut-off score of 105 and below has been found to predict, with
95% accuracy, those who will recover and, with 81% accuracy,
those who will have no further sick leave, in the next 6 months.
Prediction of long-term sick leave (>30 days within the next
6 months) was found to be 67% accurate. A cut-off score of 130
and above correctly predicted 86% of those who failed to return
to work [
1]. This assists the clinician to apply interventions
(including the use of activity programmes based on cognitive
behavioural strategies) to reduce the risk of long-term pain-related
disability. Evidence indicates that these factors can be changed
if they are addressed.
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Items
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Items 3–5 address the number of regions of the body where
pain is experienced, how long the pain has been a problem and
how much time has been lost from work in the past 18 months
because of pain. Items 7–10 are concerned with the patient's
perception of pain and coping strategies. Items 6 and 15 focus
on the individual's perception of their work. Questions 11–14
are looking at feelings of anxiety, depression and the patient's
perception of their pain becoming persistent and their likelihood
of getting back to work in the next 6 months. The items 16–18
are concerned with fear-avoidant beliefs and behaviours in response
to pain and items 19–23 are on activities of daily living.
The first two questions (and in some countries more) are age
and gender and are not used in scoring.
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Validity
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Analysis reveals that the items on the questionnaire were significantly
related to future problems. For absenteeism due to sickness,
68% of the patients were correctly classified into one of three
groups, whereas an even distribution would have produced 33%.
The analyses for function correctly classified 81%, and for
pain 71%, into one of two groups, compared with a chance level
of 50%. A total score analysis demonstrated that a cut-off score
of 90 points had a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 65%
for absenteeism due to sickness and a sensitivity of 74% and
a specificity of 79% for functional ability [
1].
The results underscore that psychological variables are related to outcome 6 months later [2], and they replicate and extend earlier findings indicating that the ÖMPQ is a clinically reliable and valid instrument. The total score is a relatively good predictor of future absenteeism due to sickness absence as well as function, but not of pain. The results suggest that the instrument could be of value in isolating patients in need of early interventions and may promote the use of appropriate interventions for patients with psychological risk factors.
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Key research
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The ÖMPQ and ALBPSQ have been used in many studies in a
variety of countries and languages [
3–
5].
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Source
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The questionnaire is available from the original paper [
1].
There are no charges.
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References
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- Linton SJ, Boersma KMA. Early identification of patients at risk of developing a persistant back problem: the predictive validity of the Örebro Musculoskeletal Pain Questionnaire. Clin J Pain (2003) 80–86.
- Thomas E, Silman AJ, Croft PR, Papageorgiou AC, Macfarlane GJ. Predicting who develops chronic low back pain in primary care: a prospective study. Br Med J (1999) 318:1662–1667.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
- Hurley DA, Dusoir TE, McDonough SM, Moore AP, Linton SJ, Baxter GD. Biopsychosocial screening questionnaire for patients with low back pain: preliminary report of utility in physiotherapy practice in Northern Ireland. Clin J Pain (2000) 16:214–228.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline]
- Grotle M, Vøllestad NK, Brox JI. Screening for yellow flags in first-time acute low back pain: reliability and validity of a Norwegian version of the Acute Low Back Pain Screening Questionnaire. Clin J Pain (2006) 458–467.
- Heneweer H, Aufdemkampe G, van Tulder MW, Kiers H, Stappaerts KH, Vanhees L. Psychosocial variables in patients with (sub)acute low back pain: an inception cohort in primary care physical therapy in the Netherlands. Spine (2007) 32:586–592.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline]
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A brief history
Description