INTRODUCTION Lower back pain (LBP) has often been described as a common, costly and debilitating condition, creating a challenge for management of this disorder. People with LBP often report an impaired ability to perform activities of daily living (Lin et al 2011). This impact that pain has on a person’s daily functionality can be conveyed as that person’s level of disability. In 1980, the World Health Organisation (WHO) defined disability as any restriction or lack of ability to perform an activity within the range considered normal for a human being. This definition has been revised in 2007 in the WHO classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), wherein disability is used as an umbrella term to cover 3 broad aspects of health: …show more content…
Recently, however, the focus has shifted to patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures, whereby questionnaires are used by patients to self-report. Pain-related disability questionnaires in LBP focus on the decrease in capacity of performance and altered performance of activities of daily living, but also cover other limitations of health under the ICF definition (Grotle et al 2005). In this literature review, the author aims to investigate the current literature pertaining to the Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (RDQ), Quebec Back Pain Disability Scale (QBPDS) and Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) with regards to assessing LBP and disability. The RDQ was originally designed to be used for primary care research to assess physical disability due to LBP in 1983 by Roland and Morris (Roland and Fairbank 2000). The RDQ has been widely used in clinical practice in a variety of settings to monitor treatment progress in patients with acute, subacute, and chronic LBP as well as sciatica (Smeets et al …show more content…
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