Purpose: The aim of this study was to conduct a five-year review of the cases of Spinal Pain (SP) managed at the physiotherapy out-patient department of the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria.

Relevance: Spinal Pain is one of the clinical conditions managed at the orthopaedic unit of physiotherapy departments all over the world. It appears there is no existing information on the pattern of SP being managed in these departments.

Methods: Newly referred cases of SP from January 2006 to December 2010 of the out-patient unit, physiotherapy department, University College Hospital Ibadan were identified from the departmental patients’ attendance register. The referral cards, progress notes and case files of the identified cases were retrieved and sorted out. Cases of reported SP were identified. Information on gender, age, primary diagnosis, physiotherapy impression, number of treatment sessions, outcome measures used, physiotherapy intervention, impairment variables, disability variables, discharge rate were obtained and recorded into a self designed data recording form. The data obtained were entered into spreadsheet for proper analysis.
Analysis: Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics of mean, standard deviation and percentages.
Results: The results showed that the retrieved cases of SP involved patients between the age group of 13-89 years with mean age of 53.42±15.08 years. Cases with reported age group of 60 years and above had a highest prevalence (35.23%) of spinal pain. Cases with SP constituted 59.2% of all the cases managed, more females were reported to have SP. Lumbar spondylosis was the mostly recorded diagnosis while there was no record of coccygynia during the study period. Outcome measures were underutilized with no record of reported outcome measures for majority of the patients (51.44%). Physiotherapists discharge rate of SP was 9.14%.

Conclusions: It can be concluded that SP is a common clinical condition managed in the Physiotherapy department of this tertiary health institution accounting for about 60% of new patients seen and managed at the Orthopaedic unit. It is more common in females than males. Utilization of outcome measures and the discharge pattern of these patients by hysiotherapists who managed the patients were poor.

Implications: This study buttresses the need for improvement in clinical documentation of cases, usage of standardized outcome assessment and the need for improvement in clinical reasoning skills of Physiotherapists.

Keywords: Spinal pain, Outcome measures, Review, Discharge pattern.

Funding: This study was unfunded.