Welcome to PT Elevated! Our first guest is the esteemed Anthony (Tony) Delitto, PhD, PT PhD, the Dean of School of Health and Rehabilitation Science and Professor of Physical Therapy at University of Pittsburgh. Our hosts Kory Zimney, PT, DPT, PhD and Paul Mintken, PT, DPT, OCS, FAAOMPT talk with Tony about all things low back pain. He talks his foundational research for Treatment-Based Classification, the Low Back Pain Clinical Practice Guideline and his new research on implementation.

Tony Delitto has been practicing and researching for over 40 years, and his expertise and wisdom combine for an episode packed with tips and takeaways for your clinic.

Here are some highlights from the episode:

What are Delitto’s key takeaways from LBP research?

1. There is A LOT of it that you can work from.
2. Active approaches are the way to go.
3. Pay attention to the behavioral component and use psychologically-informed care in your practice.
4. Avoid passive approaches.

Here’s his original CPG: Low Back Pain Clinical Practice Guideline

Delitto’s research on Treatment-Based Classification came from organically joining up with other physical therapists. Listen in to see how the basis for Treatment-Based Classification came about with his colleagues Richard (Dick) Erhard and Richard (Rick) Bowling as well as Steve Rose.

Find the Treatment-Based Classification paper here: A Treatment-Based Classification Approach to Low Back Syndrome: Identifying and Staging Patients for Conservative Treatment

Delitto’s research focus is now on implementing the research that has been done over the last 40 years, and he believes that will be the great challenge of the next generation. Hear him discuss two of his most recent papers that work to close the gap between research and creating processes to access low back pain patients.

Here are the two papers on implementation:

• Implementing stratified care for acute low back pain in primary care using the STarT Back instrument: a process evaluation within the context of a large pragmatic cluster randomized trial
• Stratified care to prevent chronic low back pain in high-risk patients: The TARGET trial. A multi-site pragmatic cluster randomized trial

Lastly, Tony Delitto’s clinical pearl for all new clinicians: “The time you spend talking with your patients is more valuable than the time with your instruments.”

Connect on Socials:

• @TonyDelitto
• @ZimneyKJ
• @PMintkenDPT
• @EIMteam