Study design: Retrospective review and literature review.
Objective: The aim of this study was to provide an update on The Cochrane Back and Neck (CBN) activities.
Summary of background data: Low back pain (LBP) affects 80% of people at some time in their lives. CBN Group has been housed in Toronto at the Institute for Work & Health since 1996 and has published 85 reviews and 32 protocols in the Cochrane Library.
Methods: Narrative review of CBN publications, impact factor, usage data, and social media impact.
Results: In the past 3 years, CBN conducted priority setting with organizations that develop clinical practice guidelines for LBP. CBN editors and associate editors published key methodological articles in the field of back and neck pain research. The methodological quality of CBN reviews has been assessed by external groups in a variety of areas, which found that CBN reviews had higher methodological quality than non-Cochrane reviews. CBN reviews have been included in 35 clinical practice guidelines for back and neck conditions. The 2018 journal impact factor of CBN is 11.154, which is higher than the 2018 impact factor for CDSR (7.755). CBN reviews ranked 4th among 53 Cochrane review groups in terms of Cochrane Library usage data. The most accessed CBN review was "Yoga treatment for chronic non-specific low-back pain" which had 9689 full-text downloads. CBN is active on Twitter with 3958 followers.
Conclusion: CBN has published highly utilized systematic reviews and made important methodological contributions to the field of spine research over the past 22 years within Cochrane.
Level of evidence: 4.