The effectiveness of cognitive-behavioural interventions with people ...

30Cognitive-behavioural approaches for people with chronic painAnalysis and Interpretation of Table of Comparisons:This table indicates the summary statistic for the 10 studies that were systematically reviewed usingRevMan software. The summary statistic for each of the outcomes listed is the “weighted meandifference (WMD)”, as all of the data was continuous. The WMD is a statistical calculation of the scoresfor all of the studies that measured the outcome listed. The confidence interval is set at 95%. The scalefor the weighted mean difference statistic is from -10 to +10.In this table, the vertical line indicates “no difference” between the treatment and control groups. Thesummary statistic (ie. the squares and lines) to the left of the vertical line indicates that the overall effectscore for the outcome favours the control condition. The summary statistic to the right of the vertical lineindicates that the overall effect score for that outcome favours the treatment condition (that is, Cognitivebehaviouralintervention).The outcomes that are compared in this table are listed on the far left side of the page. They areorganized into 3 main comparison groups:1. Cognitive-behavioural intervention versus standard/alternative care - short term outcomes;2. Cognitive-behavioural intervention versus control condition (waitlist or no attention) - short termoutcomes;3. Cognitive-behavioural intervention versus standard/alternative care - long term outcomes; andPlease note that there are no comparisons for cognitive-behavioural intervention versus control conditionover the long term, as there was insufficient data.Under each of these comparisons, there are 6-8 different outcomes that were measured in the 10 studies.These outcomes were measured in two or more studies to be included in this analysis.The terms “negative measures” means that the lower the score the better the outcome, whereas “positivemeasures” means that the higher the score the better the outcome.Interpretation:The summary statistic (WMD), which is the overall effect size, is graphically displayed as lines andsquares in Table 3. The squares represent the mean and the lines indicate the confidence interval for thesummary statistic. The results would not be considered as strong if the lines and/or squares weretouching the vertical (no difference) line. The majority of the summary statistics in Table 3 are touchingthe vertical “no difference” line, which indicates a weak overall effect for most of the outcomes. Theoutcomes that are clearly in one direction are pain perception and pain intensity, which both favour thetreatment condition (cognitive-behavioural intervention) over a control (wait-list or no attention)condition in the short term.An arrow to the far right or left of the scale indicates that the summary statistic (WMD) is off the scale.This means that the outcome scores, when calculated together as a summary statistic, strongly favour onecondition. This only occurred with one outcome: “Coping” under the comparison of cognitivebehaviouralintervention versus standard/alternative care: for this outcome, the standard/alternative carecondition was favoured.