A considerable proportion of work absence is attributed to low back pain (LBP), with high lost productive time and health spending, specially after a work-related injury. The French Health Insurance try to improve the return-to-work for these patient with a early care in rehabilitation center. The objective of this study is to determinate if a early care three months after a work stoppage after a work-related injury improve the return to work three months after, and to determinate factors that influence the return-to-work.

Five center in France took part in this protocol, in an open prospective study; 147 LBP patients (handler) were included in 2016, three months after the work-related injury. The intervention was a multidisciplinary functional restoration program for 67 patients. The others were follow-up about the return-to-work. The outcome was the return-to-work rate three months after the intervention.

In the 52 remaining patients, 26 (50%) were at work at 3 months: 16 in full time at the same job. Nine patients were in occupational retraining. For the other 80 patients, 70 (87.5%) were at work at three months. Active physiotherapy, TAMPA, FABQ, DALLAS, Visual Analog Scale (VAS) after the programs were found to have relationships with the outcome. LBP background and being sportive before or after the program, were not found to have relationship with the outcome.

Unfortunately, we fund an adverse effect of the multidisciplinary functional restoration program from patients with low back pain in work stoppage after a work-related injury in our study. Maybe the overmedication, or the drama caused by this program in hospitalization, must influence the situation of workers. Surprisingly, sports practice did not show any influence on the results. Active physiotherapy should be offered to any patient in this situation to promote the return to work.