Article

OBJECTIVE: To compare self-report measures of daily activities with objective
activity data to determine whether patients with chronic lower back pain report
their activity levels as accurately as controls do. DESIGN: A cross-sectional
study was performed in patients and controls. The study was carried out
in the daily environment of the subjects. SUBJECTS: Thirty-two chronic lower back
pain patients with symptoms more than three months and 20 healthy controls from
the Netherlands, aged 18-65 years. MAIN MEASURES: A tri-axial accelerometer was
worn for five weekdays and the Baecke Physical Activity Questionnaire was filled
in. Pearson's correlation was calculated to get insight in the awareness of
patients and controls. Comparisons of the relationship between the objective and
subjective scores of each individual patient with those of the group of controls
were used to allocate each patient into subgroups: overestimators,
underestimators and aware patients. Physical and psychological characteristics of
these groups were explored. RESULTS: Patients showed weak correlations between
the objective and subjective scores of physical activity and appear to have
problems in estimating their activity levels
(r = -0.27), in contrast to controls
who showed strong correlations between the objective and subjective scores (r = 0.66). Comparison of the individual relationships of patients with those of
controls showed that 44% of the patients were not aware of their activity level.
There were relatively more underestimators (30%) than overestimators (14%).
Physical characteristics between the three groups tended to be different.
CONCLUSIONS: Patient self-reports about their activity level are relatively
inaccurate when compared to objective measurements.

Langue : ANGLAIS