Which patients with persistent mechanical low back pain will respond to high load motor control training?

• Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore variables influencing success or failure of eight weeks of high load motor control training with the conventional deadlift exercise.Relevance: Researching viable exercises for rehabilitation of specific sub-groups of persistent low back pain is relevant for physical therapists in order to develop tailored treatment regimes for patients with persistent low back pain. This study contributes to this research by exploring which variables characterize the ideal patient for the conventional deadlift exercise.Participants: Thirty-five patients with persistent mechanical low back pain were recruited consecutively from two occupational health care services in Umeå, Sweden . Inclusion and exclusion criteria were designed to include patients with persistent mechanical low back pain.Methods: The study design was a prospective cohort study. The intervention consisted of eight weeks of training with the conventional deadlift exercise. To discriminate between patients with a successful or failed outcome of treatment, change in the patient-specific functional scale was used and a cut-off at 50 % improvement was set. Possible predictive variables collected at baseline included physical activity level, pain intensity (Visual Analogue Scale), activity limitation (the Roland and Morris Disability Questionnaire and the Patient-Specific Functional Scale), kinesiophobia (Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia), specific anamnestic questions regarding patients' history and symptoms of low back pain, test of active movement control of the low back, trunk muscle endurance(Prone bridge test, Side-bridge test, Biering-Sörensen test) and lift strength (static two-hand lift test), two-point discrimination of the low back and ultrasound imaging of the mm. multifidi.Analysis: Student´s T-test for normally distributed continuous data, Mann Whitney for non-normally distributed continuous data and chi-square tests or Fisher´s Exact tests for categorical variables were used for analyses of differences between the success and the failure group.Results: No significant differences between groups were found in background, anamnestic or physical performance variables. After eight weeks of training, 15 patients (43 %) were categorized as treatment success and 20 patients (57 %) were categorized as treatment failure according to the cut-off set for the PSFS. The patients reported difficulty in performing a wide variation of activities, ranging from not being able to sit for longer than 15 minutes, to stand upright and watch their children play football games, and to not being able to run long distances, play football or perform different lifting tasks.Conclusions: We conclude that the conventional deadlift exercise may be considered a possible exercise to improve patients' activity limitations, if administered by a therapist experienced in resistance training and analyzing movement patterns. However, further research is needed to explore which variables can define patients in the successful and in the failure group, respectively.Implications: The results of this study imply that the conventional deadlift exercise can be used in treatment of patients with mechanical low back pain in order to increase activity limitation. However, it is still unclear on what grounds treatment with the conventional deadlift exercise is indicated to achieve these results.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Sjukgymnastik (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Physiotherapy (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Physiotherapy

Fysioterapi

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