The methodology of validating movement system based classification of low back pain: narrative review article

Classifying patients with low back pain into homogeneous and distinct categories by organizing similar manifestations among individuals can be helpful to attain better results for treatments. Providing homogenous categories of patients with low back pain would improve benefits produced by treatments. To gain a greater understanding of the proposed multi-stage process and validate diagnostic categories, the current research was designed to conduct a review about this process. We aimed to validate movement system impairment (MSI) based categories of people with chronic low back pain. MSI-based classification uses a standardized approach for classifying people with low back pain into 1 of 5 subgroups. For the present narrative review, computerized databases of EMBASE, Google Scholar, MEDLINE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PubMed and Science Direct were searched for articles published between January 1990 and December 2018. For electronic searches, keywords and terms used were: “Reliability”, “Validity”, “Classification”, “low back pain" and “Human Movement System”. Fourteen full-text research reports that have been undertaken to add clinical, laboratory and outcome validity to MSI-based classification of low back pain were included in the review. Five studies were categorized as clinical validity studies which investigated the accuracy of examinations for patients with low back pain, 5 studies categorized as laboratory validity studies and 4 studies categorized as outcome validity studies which included randomized control trials. The results of this review revealed that novice users can learn the diagnosis algorithm of MSI-based categories of low back pain and by practicing, their inter-tester reliability and precision in applying the classification algorithm would be comparable to that of described for experienced expert raters. The laboratory-based tests, including 3D motion analysis, indicated that there are differences in movement patterns of the lumbar spine between low back pain subgroups. Also, for people with low back pain, classification-specific treatments based on the MSI model resulted in better outcomes. In conclusion, this review indicated the validity of the MSI classification system in people with chronic low back pain.