When patients improve following treatment, how much can be attributed to the intervention delivered, and how much is due to contextual factors and nonspecific effects that lie outside of the clinician's control?

Dr. Giacomo Rossettini joins the podcast again as a co-author of a paper (link below) that answers that very question.

Dr. Rossettini and his research colleagues tried to quantify the effect of contextual factors with a meta-analysis. They found non-specific effects play a big role in patients' outcomes. Today's discussion covers what these contextual factors are, how the researchers quantified them, and how musculoskeletal rehabilitation clinicians can harness non-specific effects to boost patients' outcomes.

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RESOURCES

Non-specific effects in musculoskeletal pain treatment outcomes (meta-analysis): https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2024.12126