Early physiotherapy referral for low back pain reduces healthcare utilisation for advanced imaging and specialist spine surgery consultations.

Introduction: Low back pain (LBP) is one of the most common presenting complaints among patients and the costliest orthopaedic condition. This study aimed to compare the healthcare utilisation rates of advanced imaging and specialist consultations for LBP between patients presenting with early physiotherapy (EPT) before specialist review and routine physiotherapy (RPT) after specialist review.

Methods: Consecutive patients who (n = 311) had been referred to specialist spine surgery for LBP in 2021 were retrospectively reviewed. Baseline demographics, healthcare utilisation rates and clinical outcomes were compared between those who attended EPT before spine surgery consultation and those who attended RPT after specialist consultation.

Results: There were no significant differences in baseline demographics or clinical outcomes of Visual Analogue Scale pain scores, EuroQol 5-Dimension scores and surgery rates between the EPT (n = 183) and RPT (n = 128) groups. At 6 months follow-up, EPT was associated with significantly lower magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) rates (P = 0.026), decreased likelihood of requiring MRI (odds ratio [OR] 0.865, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.757-0.990), reduced number of specialist spine surgery consultations (P < 0.001), decreased likelihood of requiring additional specialist consultations (OR 0.770, 95% CI 0.655-0.905), fewer physiotherapy sessions (P = 0.001) and decreased likelihood of requiring additional physiotherapy sessions (OR 0.835, 95% CI 0.553-1.261).

Conclusions: Early physiotherapy reduces the (a) overall treatment duration from the first referral by the primary physician, (b) number of advanced imaging ordered (and thus, associated imaging costs), and (c) total number of clinic and therapy sessions, and it is safe and allows patients to achieve comparable functional outcomes to their counterparts undergoing RPT. These findings support the implementation of EPT for patients with LBP to reduce healthcare utilisation and associated costs for patients, providers and healthcare systems.