Mark Laslett – Back Pain 300: Introduction to Advanced Diagnosis & Management

Mark Laslett – Back Pain 300: Introduction to Advanced Diagnosis & Management

The Back Pain 300 series of courses is a programme of study designed for physiotherapists, medical practitioners and other health care providers who have experience with managing people with persistent low back pain and referred lower limb pain.

Back Pain 300: Introduction to Advanced Diagnosis and Management.

This is the first lesson in the 300-series. This course is a pre-requisite for other lessons in the 300 series.

Back Pain 300 introduces you to an advanced level of clinical diagnostics and treatments for the various sources and causes of back and referred lower limb pain. In the course Mark challenges the notion of ‘non-specific’ low back pain and shows you how to identify specific subgroups of the back pain population using a simple and structured clinical assessment supported by advanced diagnostic techniques.

What is covered in this course?

This short course shows you how to achieve a clinical diagnosis using the history and physical examination, and highly selective use of technology.

You will also gain the scientific background needed to understand how the anatomy, pathology and biomechanics of the anterior column influence sources of pain posterior to the intervertebral disc. We look specifically at the pathology and anatomy of the intervertebral disc, and investigate the concept and validation of discogenic pain before proceeding onto exploration of other parts all the lumbar spine and pelvis in other Back Pain 300 courses.

The course consists of two chapters that cover pathoanatomy and biomechanics, and introduces the concept of discogenic pain and its diagnosis and management. The course covers:

• pathoanatomy and biomechanics of the anterior column
• sources and causes of low back and referred lower limb pain
• the concept of discogenic pain
• anatomy and pathology of the intervertebral disc including normal age-related changes
• pain centralisation
• principles of clinical diagnosis of LBP
• diagnosis by subtraction for subgrouping people with LBP to guide treatment.

Learning Activities in this Course:

The lesson includes a video case study of pain centralisation, an important group since centralisers are the largest subgroup within the back pain population.

You will also be able to download the case notes of the patient seen in the introductory course and be encouraged to self test your own clinical reasoning skills using the details of this case and the learning from the three lectures on the principles of clinical diagnosis.

Other learning resources include:

• research article download and reading
• a quiz to test your understanding of the material
• downloadable pdf forms to use in your clinical practice

What You’ll Learn In Back Pain 300: Introduction to Advanced Diagnosis & Management

Lesson curriculum

Welcome to the course!

• About the “Back Pain 300 Series”
• Welcome to the Introductory Lesson: Back Pain 300
• About Mark Laslett
• Where did you hear about this course?
• Manual for BP300 Introduction

Chapter 1: Patho-Anatomy & Biomechanics

• References for patho-anatomy and biomechanics of the anterior column
• Anterior Column Patho-Anatomy & Biomechanics Part 1
• Anterior Column Patho-Anatomy & Biomechanics Part 2
• Sagittal plane lumbar spine biomechanics in vitro
• Quiz: Anterior Column Patho-Anatomy & Biomechanics

Chapter 2: Discogenic Pain & the Question of Diagnosis

• References for Discogenic Pain and the Petersen T et al 2017 paper
• Read Petersen Laslett Juhl 2017 Paper
• Chapter 2 Quiz on Petersen T et al 2017 paper
• Sources & Causes of Low Back & Referred Lower Limb Pain
• Is Low Back Pain Really Non-specific A challenge to an old dogma
• Discogenic Pain
• Chapter 2 Quiz on Discogenic Pain
• Reference Standard for Discogenic Pain
• Diagnosis by Subtraction in back pain illustrated with a child’s game
• Record of Reading

About Dr Mark Laslett

PhD, NZRPS, FNZCP, Dip.MT, Dip.MOT
Physiotherapy Specialist Musculoskeletal

Mark has over 50 years of clinical experience in musculoskeletal practice. He completed his PhD in “Diagnostic accuracy of the clinical examination compared to available reference standards in chronic low back pain patients” at the University of Linköping, Sweden in 2001 and in 2014 he became the first Specialist Physiotherapist registered in New Zealand.
His academic and research interest is in the theory and practice of diagnostics, has over 40 publications, contributed chapters to two multi-author books and published his own text Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy: The Upper Limb in 1996.

He became a Fellow of the New Zealand College of Physiotherapy in 2007, was made an honorary Life Member of Physiotherapy New Zealand in September 2014, and of the New Zealand Manipulative Physiotherapists Association in 2015.

He continues to practice as a consultant clinician in Christchurch, NZ and remains active in clinical research.

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