What This Review Looked At
Chronic low back pain is one of the most common — and most stubborn — conditions in clinical medicine. Most cases are non-specific, meaning no single structural cause can be clearly identified, and most patients spend years cycling through physiotherapy, manual therapy, medication, and a long tail of complementary approaches. In 2022 a research team led by Chen and colleagues published a systematic review and meta-analysis in Clinical Rehabilitation asking whether laser-based photobiomodulation therapy — well-studied in joint and tendon pain — has a measurable effect on chronic low back pain specifically.
The authors searched the major medical databases for randomised controlled trials comparing photobiomodulation therapy with placebo or standard care in adults with chronic low back pain. After applying their inclusion criteria they pooled outcomes from the eligible trials, focused on pain intensity (visual analogue scale and similar measures) as the primary outcome, and disability scores as a secondary outcome.
What They Found
The pooled analysis showed that photobiomodulation therapy was associated with a meaningful reduction in pain compared with control conditions in adults with chronic low back pain. The size of the effect was clinically relevant, and the direction of effect was consistent across the trials that met the inclusion criteria.
Disability outcomes followed the same direction, although the effect on function was less consistent than on pain itself — a pattern that is familiar in the broader chronic-pain literature, where pain reduction often outpaces functional recovery.
What This Means in Context
Honest framing matters here. The evidence base for photobiomodulation in chronic low back pain is real but not yet settled. Individual trials in the field vary considerably in their dose parameters, wavelengths, treatment duration, and outcomes — and earlier systematic reviews have come to less optimistic conclusions. The 2022 Chen meta-analysis pools the available randomised evidence and finds a consistent direction of effect, but the field has not yet converged on a single best protocol.
Practically, this means photobiomodulation should be understood as one promising option in the broader chronic-low-back-pain toolkit — not yet a settled first-line intervention, but worth considering alongside the foundational elements of evidence-based back-pain care: movement, strength, weight management, and where appropriate, structured physiotherapy.
What It Means for You
If you are living with chronic non-specific low back pain and the standard approaches have only partly helped, this meta-analysis suggests that consistent photobiomodulation therapy may add measurable pain relief on top of what you are already doing. It is best understood as a supportive option rather than a stand-alone fix, and any new approach is worth a conversation with the clinician helping you manage your back pain.
Citation: Chen, Y.-J., Liao, C.-D., Hong, J.-P., Hsu, W.-C., Wu, C.-W., & Chen, H.-C. (2022). Effects of laser therapy on chronic low back pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Clinical Rehabilitation, 36(5), 583–598. DOI: 10.1177/02692155211057435
