Articles: back-pain.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Documenting female spine motion during coitus with a commentary on the implications for the low back pain patient.
To describe female lumbar spine motion and posture characteristics during coitus and compare these characteristics across five common coital positions. Exacerbation of low back pain during coital movements and positions is a prevalent issue reported by female low back pain (LBP) patients. To address this problem, the first study to examine lumbar spine biomechanics during coitus was conducted. ⋯ The findings provided here may guide the clinician's specific recommendations, including alternative coital positions and/or movement patterns or suggesting a lumbar support, depending on the female LBP patient's specific motion and posture intolerances.
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The expanding role of physiotherapists, with increasing use of services such as self-referral, means that demonstrating an ability to understanding and ask red-flag questions appropriately has never been more important. The present study investigated how physiotherapists define common red flags, how they ask red-flag questions, which red flags they routinely record and the importance that therapists attribute to individual red-flags. ⋯ If only certain red flags are being assessed, this may put patients at risk of having serious spinal pathologies going undetected. Thus, strategies encouraging therapists to ask all red-flag questions may be needed. The importance of the more recently recognized red flags may need to be emphasized to clinicians. Finally, the inconsistent way in which the red-flag questions were asked highlights a potential practical barrier to translating red-flag knowledge into clinical practice. There is a need to build on this work, using in-depth qualitative interviews, to gain a deeper understanding of how therapists understand and apply the red flags commonly used in back pain assessment.
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Comparative Study
A comparison of abdominal muscle thickness changes after a lifting task in subjects with and without chronic low-back pain.
Using ultrasound imaging, the abdominal muscles' response to the back extensor muscle fatigue was assessed in subjects with chronic low-back pain (CLBP). ⋯ Ultrasound imaging technique can provide critical information about the effect of fatigue on spinal muscle activation and consequently about the stability of the spine. As a more applicable and easy technique, ergonomists can use ultrasound imaging in musculoskeletal system assessment in worker populations in future studies.
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Recent data show that the thoracolumbar fascia can be a source of pain. However, the spinal neuronal mechanisms underlying pain from a pathologically altered fascia are unknown. The present study aimed at finding out how dorsal horn neurons react to input from a chronically inflamed thoracolumbar fascia. ⋯ One of the prominent findings was the appearance of new receptive fields in deep tissues of the hindlimb. Together with the expansion of the spinal target region of fascia afferents into the segment L3, the appearance of new receptive fields is a possible explanation for the spread of pain in patients with non-specific low back pain.