• Zhixin Zheng, Jun Wang, Qian Gao, Jingshan Hou, Ling Ma, Congbo Jiang, and Guohui Chen.
• Rehabilitation Medicine Center, Division of Medical Technology, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, China. zhx-zh@163.com
• J Tradit Chin Med. 2012 Dec 1; 32 (4): 534-7.

ObjectiveTo observe the therapeutic effect of lumbar tender point deep tissue massage plus lumbar traction on chronic non-specific low back pain using change in pressure pain threshold, muscle hardness and pain intensity as indices.MethodsWe randomly divided 64 patients into a treatment group (32 cases) and a control group (32 cases). Two drop-outs occurred in each group. Patients in the treatment group received tender point deep tissue massage plus lumbar traction and patients in the control group received lumbar traction, alone. We used a tissue hardness meter/algometer and visual analog scale (VAS) to assess the pressure pain threshold, muscle hardness and pain intensity.ResultsFollowing treatment, we obtained the following results in the treatment and control groups, respectively: the pressure pain threshold difference was 1.5 +/- 0.8 and 1.1 +/- 0.7; the muscle hardness difference was 4.2 +/- 1.6 and 3.5 +/- 1.3; and the VAS score difference was 1.9 +/- 0.9 and 1.4 +/- 0.8. Compared to the control group, the treatment group had higher pressure pain threshold (t = 2.09, P < 0.05), and lower muscle hardness (t = 2.05, P < 0.05) and pain intensity (t = 2.46, P < 0.05).ConclusionLumbar tender point deep tissue massage combined with lumbar traction produced better improvement in pressure pain threshold, muscle hardness and pain intensity in patients with chronic non-specific low back pain than with lumbar traction alone.

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