Mindfulness Meditation for the Treatment of Chronic Low Back Pain: A Preliminary Quasi-randomized Controlled Pilot Study

Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Pain Therapy (MBPT) a treatment combining mindfulness meditation and several interventions taken from cognitive therapy within the frame of the multimodal pain therapy program, in patients suffering from chronic low back pain (CLBP).Design: A quasi-randomized case-control study. Subjects: The study included 20 subjects with chronic low back pain were recruited and quasi-randomly allocated to a standard multimodal pain therapy (n=10) or to a multimodal pain therapy group with MBPT (n=10). The intervention was identical for both groups except for the mindfulness meditation program.Methods. Both groups participated in a 4-week training, 5 times/week. All subjects underwent the same measurement protocol before and after the intervention. The program was evaluated on the basis of measure of pain, quality of life, disability, pain catastrophizing and depression. Results: The trial group displayed significant reduction in pain intensity, improvement in the quality of life, reduction in pain disability, in depression and pain catastrophizing. Conclusion: The study indicated that mindfulness meditation can influence the treatments and lead to a significant improvement in the overall result of the multimodal pain therapy.