Amsterdam Movement Sciences

Speakers: Professor Chris Maher & Professor Jaap van Dieen
Professor Maher research interests centre on management of musculoskeletal conditions in primary care and he is one of the highest ranked researchers in this field. Chris is Director Institute for Musculoskeletal Health, Sydney School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health. He will present some of his recent work on low back pain in the emergency department (ED) and he will share his experience of conducting the SHaPED tial (n= 4,625 patients!!) across four EDs in New South Wales, Australia. (see abstract below)
Professor Dieen research interests concentrate on the effects of ageing, musculoskeletal and neurological disorders on human movement with as main focus the stability of posture and gait. Jaap is Head of the department of Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Behavioral and Movement Sciences, VU Amsterdam. He will present future ideas on an ambitious research proposal for the NWA (National Dutch Research Agenda).
Professor Chris Maher (Director Institute for Musculoskeletal Health, Sydney School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health): Insights on low back pain in the emergency department
Low back pain is one of the leading reasons for presentation to the emergency department (ED); e.g. in the United States there are over 4 million presentations per year. However, its management in this setting has received relatively little attention and there have been few efforts to develop strategies to improve care and outcomes for people who present to ED with low back pain. Interestingly while there are dozens of guidelines to inform management of low back pain in primary care, there are no guidelines specific to the ED setting. While it may be tempting to adopt primary care guidelines for use in the ED; new research would suggest that this may not be wise. This talk will share my own and others’ research to demonstrate that low back pain patients in ED differ to those seen in primary care e.g in terms of mode of arrival, case mix, care received, severity of symptoms and clinical course. It will also highlight the paucity of clinical trials that have studied care delivered in the ED setting. However, despite these challenges the ED setting does offer considerable opportunities for low back pain research; partly because so little has been done, but also because of the easy access to large numbers of patients and the ability to harvest data from the electronic medical records. To illustrate the potential for research I will share the experience of conducting the SHaPED tial (n= 4,625 patients) across four EDs in NSW.
Professor Jaap van Dieën (FGB, VU & AMS) will present future ideas on an ambitious research proposal for the NWA (National Dutch Research Agenda). The point of departure is the observation that stratified care in low back pain has not been really successful, and that research doesn’t really integrate the bio-psychosocial model. Key to improve the care for low back is to personalize care by a truly integration of the bio-psychosocial model thereby identifying the most important modifiable risk factors using modern measurement and analytic methods, and to test treatment modules in various proof-of-concept studies. The Amsterdam Movement Sciences (AMS) awarded a grant in order to support the work needed to be done for this grant proposal.
Zoom link: https://vu-live.zoom.us/j/96520220013; Meeting ID: 965 2022 0013; Passcode: 389773