Environmental Scan

Low back pain and knee pain, are the most musculoskeletal leading causes of disability globally. There are many interventional procedures used in the management of some clinical conditions. However, the majority of these procedures provide temporary symptomatic relieve which may not be helpful for all patient. On the other hand, various diagnostic and interventional imaging could be used to help in clinical management guidance. All these procedures could be performed unnecessarily in many of the cases. Which has an adverse impact on individuals as well as on healthcare providers and health insurance companies in term of money and time wasting? Clinical management guidelines for some of the most common musculoskeletal conditions (back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, knee pain) now explicitly discourage practitioners from the routine use of diagnostic imaging. Decision aids DAs have been found to diminish the use of unnecessary clinical procedures in many medical conditions. DAs have been shown to stimulate people to take a more active role in decision making, to increase knowledge and, when probabilities are included in DAs, to improve the accuracy of risk perception. This project is aiming to do an environmental scan to identify the available DAs which target patients who suffer from low back pain or knee osteoarthritis who seek medical advice. Then to evaluate these DAs using international patient decision aids standard IPDAS