[Desire for early retirement and therapy of chronic back pain: relevance of social medical variables for outpatient psychotherapeutic treatment]. / Rentenbegehren und Therapie chronischer Rückenschmerzen: Die Relevanz sozialmedizinischer Variablen bei ambulanter psychotherapeutischer Behandlung.

BACKGROUND: This study investigated the influence of patients' desire for early retirement on the success of an outpatient cognitive behavioural treatment (CBT) in patients with chronic back pain. Previous studies have shown that the desire for early retirement and social compensation had a negative influence on therapy outcome, e.g. pain intensity and pain disability. This study was conducted to reassess whether these results can be replicated in an outpatient CBT setting. METHOD: Questionnaires assessing pain-related variables were issued to a total of 116 patients at the beginning, at the end of treatment and 6 months after termination of therapy. RESULTS: Overall, the treatment showed significant positive results in the variables assessed. In contrast to other studies, patients with a desire for early retirement also showed improvement during treatment. The success of treatment proved to be stable after termination of therapy. CONCLUSION: CBT in an outpatient setting seems to be an effective treatment for patients with chronic back pain and even patients with a desire for early retirement benefit from treatment.