OBJECTIVES: To identify PRO instruments for assessing neck and back pain, and to assess the patterns of use.

METHODS: The heoro.com database indexes publications available on PubMed according to several ontologies, including PRO tools. Using the PRO filters, we identified all publications between 1960 and 2018 that used a PRO tool to assess neck and back pain.

RESULTS: The search included 46 PRO instruments and identified 421 independent publications. The earliest publication date was 1990 and more than half were published after 2010. We found 140 studies from the USA and 182 from Europe, of which 36 were from the UK. The remaining studies were conducted in China and Japan (34), Canada (30), Australia and New Zealand (24), and other countries (26). The PRO tools most often listed in the abstracts were the Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (137), the Neck Disability Index (88), the Scoliosis Research Society questionnaires (81), and the Oswestry Disability Index (75). The other 42 instruments were each included in between 1 and 14 abstracts. Most abstracts referred simply to patients with general or chronic neck and back pain, however patients with idiopathic scoliosis were included in 33, other spinal diseases in 86, and whiplash in 17. One-hundred and fifty-one of these were clinical trials, 176 were observational studies, and 16 were systematic literature reviews. We also identified 27 that were tool validation studies, 43 measuring cost and resource use, and 3 protocols. The remaining studies measured health outcomes and mortality.

CONCLUSIONS: A wide range of instruments are available to assess neck and back pain, with 4 used consistently among studies. Of the 78 experimental studies not including one these 4 tools, it is not clear whether this is due to a lack of awareness or if the instruments were unsuitable in those settings.