A Portable Wireless Solution for Back Pain Telemonitoring: A 3D-Based, Virtual Reality Approach - Computational Intelligence in Healthcare: Advanced Methodologies - page 413

The review of the literature that follows considers the existing back pain monitoring
process, and examines more thoroughly whether this process is indeed adequate in
providing patients with the best quality treatment.
2.1 Back Pain Visualization
The diagnosis of the patient suffering from some form of back pain is considered to
be so complex that many clinicians in various disciplines still struggle to deal with.
Based on the literature [36],[42] a practical and common approach to diagnosis is to
begin with a comprehensive patient history and physical examination, subsequently
including secondary diagnostic procedures such as medical imaging, neurologic, and
psychosocial tests to supplement the initial diagnostic examinations, if necessary. The
final step after finishing the above process is to identify and implement a treatment
plan that will be based on the final diagnosis.
To this end, the aforementioned practical approach is ideally summarized and fur-
ther explained by [27], in what is described in their study as the S.O.A.P. (Subjective
testing, Objective testing, Assessment, and Planning ) process. According to their
work, this process consists of four distinct and sequentially connected phases (fig. 1),
and it is very common amongst clinicians for back pain management.
Fig. 1. The S.O.A.P process
Moreover, they argue that of great importance in this process is the accuracy of the
subjective testing phase, which has significant impact on the following assessments,
and on the final treatment plan in a way that service quality could be diminished af-
fecting the patient's well-being.
2.2 Subjective Phase
As has just been mentioned, the back pain diagnosis process initiates with the subjec-
tive testing phase, where the clinician normally collects medical information related
to patient history and clinical information [27]. According to the literature [29], there
are several pain measurement methods available that have been tested by many au-
thors, and who concluded that they could be used in back pain patients' medical in-
formation collection. These pain measurements have been categorized as follows: