• Ali Shahvarpour, Richard Preuss, Sullivan Michael J L MJL Department of Psychology, McGill University, 2001 McGill College, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1G1, Canada; Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Reh, Alessia Negrini, and Christian Larivière.
• Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail (IRSST), 505 Boul. de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 3C2, Canada; Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation of Greater Montreal (CRIR), Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Electronic address: ali.shahvarpour@polymtl.ca.
• Appl Ergon. 2018 May 1; 69: 17-24.

AbstractWorkers with low back pain (LBP) may benefit from wearing a lumbar belt (LB), but the biomechanical and psychological mechanisms involved are not fully understood. Two types of flexible LB (extensible and non-extensible) were compared to a control condition (no LB) regarding pain-related (pain, fear of pain and catastrophizing) and biomechanical (range of motion - ROM) outcomes related to two tasks: maximal trunk flexion-extension and manual material handling. Healthy controls and participants with LBP were tested. During both tasks, the two LBs reduced the lumbar ROM in participants with LBP in the same way as healthy controls. This was observed even at the beginning of the trunk flexion movement, allowing generalization to many work tasks, that is to say tasks performed with small or deep trunk flexion. The two LBs reduced pain, fear of pain and catastrophizing in subjects with LBP. That may help a gradual re-exposure to physical work activities (disability prevention perspective), or maintaining these activities (secondary prevention perspective), following a LBP episode.Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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